


leave my peace in pieces

by nopears



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aphrodisiacs, Bondage, Breathplay, Butt Plugs, Character Death, Come Inflation, Dirty Talk, Dissociation, Food Issues, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hand Feeding, Humiliation, Imprisonment, Kink Meme, Knotting, M/M, Sexual Coercion, Size Kink, Slut Shaming, Trauma, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 17:39:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9835166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nopears/pseuds/nopears
Summary: I have a concussion,Lance catalogues.This Galra thinks I’m pretty. Okay. Okay. I’ve been in better situations.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this monster fic was written for a kink meme prompt, only i added a bunch of plot no one asked for. the prompt is [here](https://voltron-kink.dreamwidth.org/2091.html?thread=730411). please be careful with the tags! check 'em good, please! i've expanded on 'food issues' and 'character death' in the end notes for anyone who needs it.
> 
> title from raleigh ritchie's song _stronger than ever_ which, uh, isn't ironic, i promise, i just didn't get to the recovery part of lance's shitty situation in this fic. that's coming.
> 
> thanks for reading :)

_Keith has Shiro. Keith has Shiro. It’s going to be okay. We’ve got Shiro back._

Another Galra drone drops to the ground at the end of the hall as Lance’s shot hits it, and he’s already turning to shoot at the ceiling behind him, past Pidge, to bring it down on the hallway behind them. The three sentries chasing them crumple underneath the rubble, and Lance whoops and gives Pidge a big old victory grin because they’ve done it.

They got Shiro back.

Pidge’s eyes widen, looking behind Lance, and he just has time to say, “oh, no,” before Pidge falls, hit by purple light, and Lance feels the cold metal of a blade slide up to the nape of his neck.

Galra must run hot. Lance knows Keith does, but he’d never put together that it’s a Galra thing until now, with this Galra stood right in his personal bubble, thanks, their breath making Lance’s neck goose-bump all up. The heat rolls off them. Lance wouldn’t need his eyes open to hit them, if he could just move quick enough to get his bayard around the right way and enough distance to shoot right. It’s like he has infra-vision.

“Blue Paladin.”

That voice is a rumble, and the way the Galra is speaking so close to his ear forces Lance to supress a shiver. Their hand touches Lance’s shoulder surprisingly lightly and pivots him around to face them. The Galra is not a normal grunt, wearing armour in black and purple that Lance thinks means he’s an officer. His helmet shows his glowing yellow eyes, but rather than the menace or aggression Lance is used to seeing in Galra faces – even their Malmoran friends are kind of terrifying most of the time – this Galra’s mouth is tilted into a smirk. His blank eyes aren’t exactly easy to read, but Lance is reminded of a cat that’s found a mouse.

He straightens his back, refusing again to shiver.

The hand on Lance’s arm pushes and he finds himself pushed into the wall.

“Drop your weapon,” the Galra Officer tells him, his other hand holding his blade steady to Lance’s throat.

Lance tightens his grip around his bayard, tilting his chin up and looking at the Galra the way Allura looks at anything or anyone who dares give her an order. He’s listening to Allura and Keith shout in his ear, hears that Shiro’s back on board the Castle, and then hears Hunk ask Pidge what their ETA is. Lance hopes the silence speaks for them both.

They barely survived this rescue mission, he realises. He has to think fast or they’ll have found one Paladin only to lose two.

What’s he supposed to do, though?

He wishes Pidge were the one awake. Lance isn’t quick enough to shoot their way out of this one alone.

The blade at Lance’s neck presses into his skin, cold, unforgiving, and a moment away from drawing blood. 

Pidge makes a noise, a moan or a gasp or, if Lance has any luck in the whole _quiznaking_ universe, a sign that they’re waking up.

Well, fuck it. He’s got to do something.

Lance grits his teeth, looks the amused Galra in the eye, and says, “sorry, dude, this gun’s a one man kinda lady.” He shoots the sentries heading towards Pidge, one-two, right in the head, and watches them drop to the ground even as the Galra next to him lowers his blade and slams into his side.

Lance feels a burning, roiling sensation as his head comes back from where it’d been slammed into metal. He tries to roll away but the Galra has him pinned, one hand to the back of his neck holding him against the wall and the other gripping his wrist until Lance’s bones creak and he involuntarily drops his bayard.

So… that didn’t go exactly how he was hoping.

His head is pounding and it feels like the ship’s stabilisers have suddenly failed; he’s vaguely aware of Keith shouting at him over the comms. Had he shouted when the Galra slammed him? They must be worried. Maybe they can get to them before--

Lance feels his other wrist get pulled back to hang out with the captive one, the Galra holding them together in one hand’s crushing grip. After a blink that might have taken a second or a tic and hopefully no longer, because losing time is not what he needs right now, Lance feels metal click into place around them and the familiar sound of intergalactic handcuffs coming online.

Lance needs to say something. He- he needs to say something for the comms. 

The hand on his neck shifts, turning Lance’s face to the side. The Galra leans in, breathing deep as he gets _way_ close to Lance’s throat, before retreating a little, watching him for a tic. He touches Lance’s cheek, just below his eye.

“Pretty,” he says. Lance does shiver this time as he feels the rumble of the Galra’s voice through his own back, realising that the Galra has pressed himself all the way along Lance’s body.

 _I have a concussion,_ Lance catalogues. _This Galra thinks I’m pretty. Okay. Okay. I’ve been in better situations._

Lance needs to say something over the comms.

The Galra tilts his head as though he’s a big cat and he’s listening to something, smirking the whole time, and Lance becomes aware again that the comms are still operational even without his input. Allura is talking, methodically telling them all that Hunk and Keith are on their way, that Lance and Pidge’s life signs are still online. Her voice is clear and Lance only knows she’s scared because she’s using their names, not calling them Paladin this and Paladin that.

Lance should say something.

“Do something for me, pretty,” the Galra tells Lance, making him shiver as he speaks again. _Pretty,_ Lance thinks. The concussion twists his thoughts away before the revulsion kicks in. The Galra doesn’t need to hold onto Lance’s wrists anymore and that hand must have ended up at Lance’s neck without him noticing, because he feels pinpricks like a tiger’s claws dig in there while the Galra’s other hand hold’s Lance’s chin, thumb caressing his jaw. The Galra says, “Tell Princess Allura: Lotor sends his greetings.”

Lance blinks, losing a moment, and when he opens his eyes again he’s looking at Pidge being held up by a two Galra soldiers, unconscious, and the Galra behind him growls, “tell her.”

Lance licks his lips, coughs, and says, “’Lura, hey.” He’s distantly aware of the chatter over the comms going silent. “Sorry, Green and Blue are out, Pidge is unconscious. I’m concussed.” The pinpricks begin to rake down Lance’s neck and Lance bites his lip to stop from crying out. He almost tries bucking the Galra off him but decides even if it weren’t pointless, he’d probably pass out. Fuck concussions. Fuck Galra.

“Lance, it’s okay, we’re coming for you,” Allura is saying. Lance opens his mouth and realises he needs to get this message done because he’s about to throw up and throwing up over comms is for Hunk and Hunk only.

“Sorry,” he says. “Concussed. Lost my gun.” He laughs, a sound he hears distantly that’s sick and lurching. It sounds like his head feels. “’M useless. Someone called Lotor says hi.”

The hand on the back of his neck and the one on his chin leave, and then something hits the back of his head and he crashes, head first, into the wall of the ship.

Something in front of his face sparks – his comm unit – as everything goes far away, dark and painless.

~~~

Lance wakes to soft comfort and his burning shoulders underneath him. There’s a smell, too, like cloves maybe, something faintly familiar but too strong. Without opening his eyes, he goes through a simple catalogue of hurts: shoulders, wrists, head, the back of his neck. He’s not at home in bed on earth and he’s not in a med-pod; his wrists are still bound behind and underneath him. He can’t hear anything past the low hum that usually registers as _Castle_.

Probably not rescued yet, then. _Shitting quiznak._

He opens his eyes to slits and has to let them adjust to the light before he can begin taking in that’s he’s- he’s on a bed. A large bed, at least a King, maybe even a Californian, but with high sides to it like it’s walled in, the walls made of a shimmering material that looks nearly like bamboo and nearly like steel that’s been woven in intricate patterns. The bed is pretty firm, calming the part of Lance’s brain that’d immediately panicked and imagined a creepy alien waterbed. There are some cushions in dark colors closer to the edges, but in the middle here the bedding seems to be sheets. They’re cotton-like and black. The familiarity is not as comforting to Lance as he would like.

He remembers the way that Galra Officer had said _pretty_ and shudders, but he’s alone in the room, unless someone is crouching for cover behind one of the bed’s half-walls.

Lance suppresses a nervous snigger at that idea.

He stretches his legs out tentatively, worrying he’ll discover a hidden hurt at any moment, before shifting and struggling to work his way up at least into a kneeling position without making too much noise.

It’s hard; it takes a while. He reflects that there should probably be a training exercise for this and imagines suggesting it to Shiro instead of focusing on how breathing is getting harder and harder to do as he struggles. As he panics.

 _Stop being useless_ , he tells himself, imagining it in Shiro’s voice because he’s nearly hard-wired to obey orders from him and it does make it easier. His chest hurts less and less, and he twists a couple more times and finally makes it to his knees.

His armour is gone, his helmet and his bayard too, but the white near-spandex bodysuit underwear that goes with it remains. It’s stained a dark red at his shoulder where he’s bled on it, whether from his neck or his head, but it’s otherwise whole. He’s not naked. That’s good.

He shies away from thinking about why that’s good. It’s just good to not be naked, that’s all. No one wants their junk out all the time.

Kneeling, Lance can see over the bed’s walls. The room he’s in is pretty spacious for a ship, probably around the size of Allura’s quarters. There’s a seating area set up around a screen, a desk in one corner, something that looks like it could be a wardrobe. A rack, probably for weapons, is set up next to the probably-a-wardrobe.

But there are touches of finery, too. A pair of boots that have to be ceremonial; still black, but intricately patterned. Several actual books on the desk, something Lance has only seen briefly in the Castle library since he left Earth. Their spines are etched in a glimmering metal, like the gold etchings found on medieval books back home. 

The bed. It’s not a grunt’s bed. It’s not a prisoner’s bed.

The Galra had said the name “Lotor” expecting Allura, not Shiro or Kolivan, to know it; ten thousand years later, how many Galra could she possibly know?

“This is not good,” Lance murmurs, looking around himself desperately as if something he hadn’t noticed would appear and help him. He’s hardly aware of saying it. He knows better. He does, when he’s not panicking. He knows you can’t say something like that and not have something worse walk right through the door.

The automated swish of it opening turns Lance back towards the noise without his permission, and he watches in full dread as the Galra from before walks through the doorway like he owns the place. Like he owns everything in this room.

He’s smirking as he looks Lance over, as he steps into the room to let the door close and lock with a click behind him.

“Hello, pretty,” he says. “Pleasant dreams?”

He unhooks his cape, laying it over the back of what’s very like a couch if it curved instead of having arms or a back or a seat. He takes off his helmet next, revealing light purple markings across his cheeks and across his forehead almost like freckles and long hair falling down his back in an intricate braid. He toes his boots off, leaving them where they are, then tosses away his gauntlets. Lance watches, unable to look away, as the Galra holds his gaze and takes off each part of his armor. It should make him less threatening, as he takes his breastplate off and puts aside his five knives hidden in various parts of his clothes. It doesn’t. He just looks quicker. Each removed piece of armor reveals more lithe muscle and more scars. His teeth, when his smirk grows into a grin, are sharp.

Finally, he stands before Lance in a garment a lot like what Lance is wearing but that it’s a deep purple and lightly padded at the elbows and knees. When he moves, he moves quickly, quicker than Lance can follow even though he’d been expecting it. In front of the door, and the next moment on the bed standing in front of Lance, looking down at him with that grin and those amused yellow eyes.

The Galra is slower as he reaches towards Lance’s face, letting him anticipate the touch, and Lance, frozen for the moment, waits as the Galra caresses Lance’s jaw and cheek.

“Well?” The Galra says, making it a question. He sounds like royalty, like Allura, like someone powerful, demanding. “Did you dream sweetly, pretty boy?”

Lance chokes on a reply, wrenching himself back in delayed reaction and, inevitably, falling back and onto his side. His arms, still twisted behind him, are useless, just like he is. He clenches his jaw and keeps his eyes open no matter how much he wants to close them, thinking about Keith drilling him for hours in hand-to-hand, kicking him whenever he closed his eyes or flinched when a blow came at his face.

 _Hah, Keith_ , he thinks miserably. _A good kick to the shin would be great right about now._

The Galra is laughing above him, a deep rumble like his voice, and like his voice it makes Lance shiver. The Galra brings his foot up, bare now, slightly furred and long-toed and otherwise nearly human, surprisingly so. He uses it to shove Lance onto his back, pushing at his chest with it. He leaves it there, lightly resting, as he considers Lance.

 _I’m the mouse, and he’s caught me,_ Lance thinks hysterically. There’s nothing to look for he hasn’t already seen and he wishes he could stay calm and look tough right now, but he’s on his back in space underwear with a creepy Galran’s foot on his chest and the remnants of a concussion and he can’t help it; his eyes dart around wildly.

The Galra has stopped laughing. Instead, leaning forward, he puts more pressure on Lance’s chest and bends at the waist to loom over him.

“Do you dream, pretty?” the Galra asks. His voice has a lilt to it now, an undertone like a purr. Lance’s breath catches and he feels more than ever like prey, caught and bound.

 _How long will it take the others to track us?_ he wonders, trying to tally it up. 

The pressure on Lance’s chest increases further as the Galra smiles to show his teeth. “Do you not understand the question? Or are you attempting to ignore me?”

 _Longer without Pidge,_ Lance realizes. _Fuck. And it depends how far away from where we started we are now._

The yellow eyes narrow.

“Answer.”

“I--” Lance realizes the faint pain he’s feeling is from his wrists, which he’s twisting over and over behind his back like he’ll be able to get free. His breath is harsh, nearly at the point where it hurts. He talks now or the Galra starts breaking ribs, he realizes. “You knocked me out,” he says. “Didn’t dream.”

The pressure on his ribs is suddenly gone and Lance half-gasps in a breath in the pure relief of it. The foot is still on his chest, but the Galra stands upright again, looking down at him like a bug underfoot. Lance feels his lip curl in response.

The Galra, if anything, looks more amused by that tiny moment of rebellion.

And, look, if you throw Lance a bone…

“Where’s Pidge? Where are we?” Lance struggles, trying to get to his knees again before seeing the look on the Galra’s face and imagining himself, handcuffed, writhing on a bed. Beneath this Galra dude’s _foot_. He flushes, furious – with himself and with the Galra – and stops struggling. “Who the hell are you?”

The Galra lifts his foot from Lance’s chest and moves back to sit atop the half-wall of the bed. Crossing his arms, he considers Lance.

“The Green Paladin has not been harmed, just subdued,” the Galra tells him in what is nearly a reasonable tone. He gestures around at the room – to encompass it or the whole ship, Lance isn’t sure – and adds, “we are… home. And my name I gave to you already, pretty.”

Lance suppresses a flinch at the petname and does his best to look… nothing like Allura would look in this situation, or Shiro, or Keith, obviously, but maybe like Pidge. He channels Pidge, scowling like someone’s just messed up an experiment he’s spent all day on, and does his best not to look pathetic on his back.

“Lotor,” Lance says – not a question, but he gets a nod anyway. “Well my name’s Lance, so you can stop with the pet names, _pendejo_ , yeah?”

It had sounded Spanish to Lance so it’s a surprise when Lotor’s face transforms to bestial fury and he springs at Lance, pinning him with a hand around his neck, the other on his face, kneeling on his thighs to keep them still as he presses on the hinge of Lance’s jaw, forcing his mouth open, and spits into his mouth.

“Swallow,” Lotor growls, like thunder across Lance’s chest and through his bones. He swallows Lotor’s spit obediently, terrified, not sure in the moment if he does it out of fear or because Lotor’s hand at his throat is massaging like he knows humans have that reflex.

That done, Lotor’s face calms and his smirk returns. He sits back, keeping one hand at Lance’s throat and moving the other to the center of his chest, looking down at him again.

“Do not use your pretty tongue to call me filthy names, pretty boy,” Lotor warns. “Or this will not be fun for you at all.”

Lance’s brain screams to a stop at the words _this_ and _fun_ and the pain in his wrists and his shoulders doubles as he frantically struggles to free himself, earning that laugh from Lotor again.

Reaching to his side, Lotor brings out the dual metal cuffs Lance recognizes as matching the ones around his wrists. Without looking behind himself, Lotor reaches back and catches first one of Lance’s ankles and then the other, holding Lance’s gaze as Lance tries to kick out of his hold and earns himself a slap to the bone of his ankle in reprimand. The way an adult might slap a child’s wrist to teach them better than to hit their siblings. Like Lance is tiny and insignificant in Lotor’s grasp.

With Lance’s ankles cuffed together, Lotor leans forward to loom over his face and asks, “do I need to gag you, pretty paladin? It has been a long day and I wish to sleep in peace. You will be more comfortable without a gag, but it is your choice.” Lotor touches a finger to Lance’s lips, tapping against them like a question.

Lance imagines being in this bed all night next to Lotor, hands and feet bound, breathing around something in his mouth, something stopping him from talking or calling out.

He shakes his head.

“Good.” Lotor pushes off from Lance with an easy grace, moving under the bed covers as he waves an imperious, dismissive hand at him. “Sleep, dream; you have nowhere to run. Your friends are far away and I sleep lightly. We will talk more in the morning.”

Lotor sprawls his ownership across the bed while Lance cowers, unable to move, where he was left like a set-down toy. He watches Lotor, wide awake, eyes wide. His skin vibrates, unable to keep still.

A long time later, he settles enough to feel a little tired, eyelids falling to half-mast, and thinks of what the other Paladins would be doing in his position. Shiro and Keith would already be free and Lotor would be dead; Allura would be spitting mad and ready to kill Lotor the moment he let his guard down; Pidge would have found something to build into a bomb, and Hunk… Hunk would be just as terrified, but he’d probably charm Lotor against all odds in the morning. Lance doesn’t measure up very well, lying there, feeling helpless and hopeless and in pain.

 _Please come find me,_ he thinks at the part of his mind that feels like Blue. _I don’t know what to do or how to get out or how to save Pidge or how to stop being scared_.

The cold of the night and Lotor’s heavy, sleeping breaths are a harsh comfort of an answer.

~~~

At some point he must sleep, because he wakes suddenly to Lotor’s heat all along his front and his hand holding Lance’s face the way he did when he forced his mouth to open, only less tightly. His yellow eyes glow in the near-dark of the ship’s sleep cycle.

“Tell me of your dreams,” Lotor says, breath ghosting over Lance’s skin.

Lance starts, almost trying to pull away until the motion makes him realize his arms have fallen asleep, stuck in the same position too long. Now pain knifes its way into his consciousness all up his arms and between his shoulders. He cries out once, but bites his lip hard to keep the rest of his pain silent, and as his eyes clear he sees Lotor watching him with what might be more amusement but might be puzzlement.

“Your dreams,” Lotor insists, shaking Lance’s head from side to side a little.

“I don’t- I didn’t dream,” Lance says, words coming unnaturally to him this morning. “I don’t remember my dreams very often.”

 _What is it with this guy?_ he thinks.

Lotor drops his face and sits, turning away from Lance as if bored and stretching his arms to the ceiling. It reminds Lance of Coran, a quick stab of unexpected, misplaced homesickness.

“Pity,” Lotor says. “Perhaps the Druids can do something about that.”

He stands and leaves the bed, moving around the room slowly, at ease. Dressing, maybe.

Lance, frozen at the mention of the Druids for several tics, breathes in deep and holds it until his chest feels uncollapsed again. He moves one finger at a time, coaxing blood flow back and gritting his teeth at the pain as he listens to Lotor go on with his daily routine as if Lance weren’t there. The pain at least reminds him just how connected to his arms he still is, knowing what he does about the Druid’s taste for removing limbs. _I have to get out of here,_ he thinks. He’s not like Shiro. He doesn’t know how long he can survive this.

His left arm on fire as he clenches his hand over and over and breathes through the pain, Lance does a really stupid thing and opens his mouth.

“Why am I here?” Lance asks. “In your room, I mean, I get that you captured me. Why am I in your room?” _Your bed_ , he thinks, but suppresses the thought with prejudice.

He can’t see Lotor over the wall until Lotor stops with whatever he’d been doing – putting his armor on, from the noise – and comes to lean over the wall behind Lance. He rests folded arms on it as he considers Lance, who’s lying on his back still, looking up at an upside-down Lotor.

Lotor’s smile looks monstrous, upside-down.

“I ordered my soldiers to bring you here,” he explains in a light, casual tone. “And here you are. Best guarded prisoner in all the Galra Empire.”

Lance frowns. He takes note of the explanation to examine later, if he’s ever in less pain than he is currently. He starts on his right pinky finger.

“How do you know Allura?”

The upside-down grin widens and grows teeth.

“She is my fiancé. My beloved.”

Lance freezes. His arms both send rivers of pain up towards his shoulders in response as he stares at Lotor in incomprehension. “I don’t believe you,” he says, voice suddenly hoarse.

An upside-down shrug joins the upside-down grin.

Lance lets out a sound of pain, maybe more whine than grunt, and again Lotor’s eyes shift from humor to confusion – maybe, if Lance isn’t projecting. They’re big yellow pits of nothing, after all.

He doesn’t care. Sometime in the night he found a spine, or maybe he’s a little shit when he’s in pain. Maybe he’ll test the theory if he ever gets out of here.

“Are you trying to make my arms fall off?” Lance demands through gritted teeth, glaring even as Lotor tilts his head to the side.

“Not especially,” Lotor admits, pushing off from the wall in order to vault over it, landing in a crouch next to Lance. He pulls Lance up into a seated position before examining his arms and hands. Lance feels first a pinprick of Galra claws pressing quite gently into the palm of his right hand, and then the delayed agony of that sensation repeating itself all the way up his arm.

He probably screams, he doesn’t remember.

“A terribly designed circulatory system,” Lotor comments mildly, taking firm hold of Lance’s right wrist ( _pain, fuck, fuck, burning,_ pain) before uncuffing it. Lance immediately tries to pull it to his chest. Lotor easily holds on, not needing the advantage of Lance’s pain but benefiting from it anyway. He brings both of Lance’s arms around to his front and recuffs them together, and then is gone again.

Lance shivers from his sudden absence and the terror of always needing to know where he is in the room even as he shakes out his arms and pushes himself with force through the pain.

When the pain subsides a bit, Lotor is helmeted and dressed, leaning over the wall again. Lance pushes himself up to sit with care, watching Lotor warily.

“I realise now I lied last night,” Lotor tells him. “This morning is not for talking either. I have my command to see to, and tonight we will talk.”

“Talk about what?”

Lotor levels a look at him that tells Lance nothing but sets his breathing faster and shallower than any time since he woke up in this room. 

And then the door opens, Lotor leaves, the door shuts, and it clicks locked behind him.

Lance is left alone, almost entirely unable to move, hurting and more scared than he’s ever been in his entire dumb, stupid, twisted outer-space life so far.

~~~

Lance counts the patterns etched on the ceiling above him.

He tries to get up to take a look around at first, hoping for a weapon or a computer to not-know-how-to-hack, but realizes on the fifteenth try that getting over that bed-wall cuffed the way he is is totally impossible. Makes sense, he supposes. Sucks, but makes sense.

Lance wastes time examining the cuffs around his wrists.

They’re damn tight, is the sum of his conclusion. Also, seamless, so even if he had something small enough to use to pry one open so he could get at whatever wiring’s inside the metal casing, there’d be nowhere to pry apart. And past that, he doesn’t know what he can try. He doesn’t even have any idea what Pidge would try.

After what must be a couple of hours – is it the middle of the day yet? Lance’s stomach thinks so – a Galra soldier walks in and picks Lance up by his bound wrists, setting him on the ground on numb feet and walking Lance to a bathroom.

“Hey, what the hell, dude? Manhandling, much?”

Lance is totally ignored and he’s not super surprised. He chatters away at the guard as he makes Lance walk around the room exactly ten times after their super uncomfortable bathroom trip, and Lance ignores the tension he can hear in his own voice, the nerves seeping out in nonsense sentences and creeping Spanish swearing.

It’s marginally better than the silence from before.

After his walk, the soldier grabs Lance’s wrists again to deposit him back on the bed before leaving.

Lance goes back to counting patterns, realizing the only weapon he’s likely to get his hands on are the sheets beneath him.

Could he really strangle someone with them?

Keith could. Shiro wouldn’t need to. Allura already would have.

Lance curls up around himself and shuts his prickling eyes tight.

He misses his team.

~~~

Lance has himself backed into the corner of the bed furthest away from the door when it opens again many hours later.

Lotor enters, bringing with him a covered tray that floats on its own and the smell of something edible, sweet, mouth-watering. With a wave of his hand he sends it to the bed ahead of him. It lands some feet away from Lance, who watches warily as Lotor sheds his layers without looking in his direction.

The amusement from yesterday is nowhere to be found as Lotor joins Lance on the bed, sitting between Lance and the tray he’d sent to rest there. The look he levels Lance with today is pure intent.

 _Intent to what?_ is a thought Lance doesn’t linger on.

The cover is removed from the tray to reveal food. A pitcher filled with softly bubbling clear liquid, a plate heaped with what look like dough twists with something green twisted through the dough and a crumble of something orange over the top. Chopped segments of something like a honeycombed mango. Some kind of deep red dip or sauce. Incongruously, a pile of something that look exactly like carrot sticks. 

Lance grits his teeth, swallowing hard. He can’t take his eyes away as Lotor takes one of the dough twist things, dips it, and starts to eat.

He watches Lance.

Lance tries very hard not to smell the food. Or look at it. Or think about it.

 _Poor Hunk_ , he thinks without humor. _I’ll never laugh at him over his food obsession again._

Lotor’s voice splits through his distraction.

“Are you hungry?”

Lance stares at him. Hesitates.

“If you are hungry,” Lotor continues, “then you of course must eat.”

The intensity in his eyes makes Lance feel tiny, as his words break through to him – through the hunger, the confusion, the fear – slowly.

Lotor, unblinking, waits him out.

Lance nods.

Lotor’s teeth flash briefly and are hidden behind closed lips again as he takes the bowl of mango-like fruit and brings it to his lap. He gestures to it, asking, “would you like a taste?”

Lance swallows, hesitates again, and nods.

Lotor takes a segment. Juice, a darker orange than the fruit, wets his fingers where he holds it, and he cups his other hand beneath it to catch any falling juice. He holds it out a moment, watching Lance, but the moment Lance shifts to move closer he draws it back towards him. Not taking it back; baiting Lance.

“First, tell me of your home planet,” Lotor says. 

Lance falls back against the wall, the disappointment sudden and shocking, making him take the fall backwards too hard and come at the wall quicker than he’d anticipated, startling himself. He’s just so hungry, it’s hard to think.

“No,” he grits out. “No way.”

This at least they have talked through as a team, if not trained for. After capture comes the interrogation. Sure, the questions about dreams hadn’t been the script Lance was expecting, but this, _this_ … Even without Shiro’s practical stories and Allura’s fierce advice, he’s seen movies.

He knows his job, here, in this situation. It’s nearly comforting to have a goal.

But--

But then Lotor shrugs. He drops the fruit segment back into the bowl, returns it to the tray, wiping his fingers, and takes another dough twist. He settles against the bed-wall behind him as he eats, paying no more attention to Lance than he pays to the wardrobe in the corner.

Lance closes his eyes and forces himself to focus on his breaths. In through his nose ( _ignore the smell, ignore the smell,_ fuck _food, ignore it_ ) and out through his mouth ( _steady, steady, it’s going to be okay_ ).

On the tenth breath, Lance shudders to a breathless stop as he remembers Lotor’s confusion over his arms his morning and wonders, _what if he he doesn’t know humans die after a couple of days without food or water?_

Quick on the heels of that thought is one of Pidge. Somewhere, Pidge is on this ship, hungry and alone. _They’re so little, what if the Galra don’t feed Pidge?_

“Humans die if we don’t get anything to eat or drink after a couple of days,” Lance says, voice sounding far away, pathetic. He watches Lotor, waiting for a reaction to duck from. “So, y’know, if you guys just eat once a week or whatever you should know we’ll die if you leave us that long.”

Lotor takes a bite of his food. Swallows. Takes a slow sip of his drink. “I am aware,” he says. “I offered food to you and you declined. Do you wish to eat?”

 _Yes_. Lance pushes the desperate thought away.

“I’m not telling you anything,” he says, bringing his knees up to his chest as a shield and so his back straightens. Lotor is tall. Not for Galra, maybe, but even sitting down his menace towers over Lance, and it makes him feel a little better to puff up in fake confidence. “I’d die before I told you anything about Earth,” he continues, willing that to be true. “But you… said I was here for _fun_ ” – he spits the word – “yesterday and I hate to tell you but I’d be a lot less fun dead.”

Lance trembles in the silence that follows as he forces himself to keep breathing evenly and pretends to himself that Shiro’s right beside him, giving him the look he usually reserves for Pidge or Keith when they make him proud. It makes it easier to keep his head held high.

Is it weird that he’s imagining his teammates there beside him? Is that a bad sign?

 _Doesn’t matter,_ he decides. _Just get through this._

Lotor moves, is suddenly beside Lance, and suddenly Lance’s chin is held between a thumb and finger as Lotor brings his glass to Lance’s lips. He looms over him, watching him intently. Tilts the glass until the liquid bubbles against Lance’s lips and he can’t stop himself from licking, tasting at it.

It’s like… grass. The aftertaste is better, though.

“Drink, pretty,” Lotor says, and Lance does.

Lotor’s other hand strokes down Lance’s throat once, then rests, curled around the base of his neck loosely. The relief of drinking is too strong for the discomfort to register past a quick flickering thought ( _nope, bad_ ) and a tensing at Lance’s shoulders.

Lotor makes him sip the drink until it’s gone and then sets the empty glass aside on the bed, still holding Lance’s chin, looking down at him from his knees.

“The moment our patrols encountered your teammate’s pitiful squad at the edge of your solar system, we began collecting information on your planet,” Lotor tells him, his tone patronizing and cold. “The Champion was my father’s pet for a year; you think we did not learn everything we needed from him? I have spent every moment since the day he was captured observing you humans and your dying world. I know more about your planet today than you ever will, pretty boy.”

Lance is a rabbit in the headlamps. Prey, caught in the crosshairs. And on top of that? He’s confused. Fear wars with confusion and maybe one wins on his face, he doesn’t know, but what he says is, “why did you ask me about Earth, then?”

Lotor’s smile is slow and deadly.

“I offer nothing,” he tells Lance, “without exacting some payment in return.”

If he’s still the rabbit, then the headlamps are closer now. He shudders out a breath rather than asking, _what did you get when you gave me a drink?_

Lance finds his head tilted up further, Lotor’s eyes glowing as he looks down at Lance, stroking his throat again, once, twice. Lance fights the urge to writhe away. There’s nowhere to go.

“What would you offer me,” Lotor asks. “For a taste of _khobi_ fruit? For the bowl?”

Lance’s brain stalls, fixating on the thought and the smell and the idea of the juice, the fruit, _food_. He stares at Lotor in incomprehension and want. He’s frozen.

He’s quickly restarted when Lotor brushes his thumb over Lance’s lower lip, making him shudder. He wrenches his thoughts away from food. Thinks about surviving instead.

“I don’t know what you could want that I’d be willing to give.”

He stares up at Lotor, waiting. Defiant even though he’s never stopped trembling this whole time. So he watches as Lotor’s eyes… soften, from curiosity to the look of someone who’s won.

“Your body,” Lotor says, simple and uncomplicated, teeth flashing. “For my pleasure. A fair trade, I think.”

Lance recoils, wrenching himself out of Lotor’s grip and only barely managing not to topple to his side. “ _No! What?_ ”

He can’t move away anywhere without falling, is caged into the corner by Lotor’s body and the walls behind him and he can’t get over the walls because his fucking wrists and ankles are still fucking useless. He’s trapped and he’s in this… predator’s bed, and this is what he’d been terrified of ever since that first heart-stopping _pretty_.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Lance asks, incredulous and terrified. “You can’t just-- _No!_ No.”

As suddenly as he always seems to move, Lotor is gone again, back to his original place on the bed. Him going is a lurch in Lance’s orbit and reminds him again of the tray of food as Lotor helps himself to more.

This time, as he eats, he never moves his eyes from Lance.

~~~

All but the fruit is gone by the time either of them speaks again. Lance looks forlornly at the crumbs left behind and misses home with all the force of his entire focus for several long moments.

“You are correct that you would be less amusing to me were you to die,” Lotor says, brushing off his fingers and beginning to shift towards Lance. He brings the bowl with him, moving unusually slowly as he watches every tiny beat of Lance’s reaction. “Here, let neither of us go to bed hungry, hm?” Lotor reaches Lance’s side, settling onto his haunches. He takes a segment of fruit and lifts it, waiting for Lance’s response. “Eat, and don’t die.”

Lance hesitates. He shifts forward slightly, watching Lotor as if he has any chance at all of catching him in a trick. He knows it is one, he’s not an idiot. You don’t offer someone what you’d just used to try to get them to give you something.

His stomach rumbles audibly and Lotor laughs, shades of cruel and soft both in the tone of it, making Lance flush in response.

Lance brings his hands up, reaching with cupped palms to accept the food (thinking _please, sir, can I have any food at all_ in a fake British accent as he does so) and takes it like a knife to the gut when, for the second time, Lotor retracts the food as if on second thoughts.

“Hands down, pretty,” he says. “I offer food, and in return you will take food from my hands alone.”

Lance is shocked into leveling a glare at him, pulling his arms back against his chest protectively. Lotor laughs again.

“You understand now. I offer nothing if nothing is what I get in return.”

Taunting, waiting, Lotor raises the fruit in offering until Lance, unable to look at him any longer, nods.

He forgets the humiliation the second he smells the fruit as Lotor brings it to his lips, opening them easily. He doesn’t flinch away as Lotor’s fingers brush against his tongue, too focused on eating.

Lotor kneels beside Lance as he feeds him segment after segment of juicy, sweet fruit. He waits attentively each time Lance takes a piece, murmuring things like, “doesn’t it taste good, pretty boy? Such a sweet taste. Poor thing. You’re famished. I could feed you anything and you’d gobble it up, greedy boy.”

Lance blocks it all out. He doesn’t care about any of it, nothing matters past the taste, the sensation of his stomach warming as he eats, the slick refreshing juice.

He comes back to himself to find Lotor’s heat all against his side and Lotor’s fingers in his mouth where he’s licking them, desperate for more juice. Lotor’s gaze is hot and heavy and so is Lance’s skin. His gut is a hot molten core.

He flinches back, turning his head to the side and struggling with his wrists. “You poisoned me,” he chokes, panicking, thinking he needs to throw up, he needs to get it out of him, as he feels Lotor’s hand circle his throat, as he is pulled back against Lotor’s body.

“Only in the most narrow of senses.”

Lance is fire. The press of the body behind him makes him keen deep in his throat as he realizes his cock is hard, leaking, and has been for a while. He presses his bound hands against it and hears his own moan from very far away. His hips thrust forward twice before he can decide to not let them. His breath shudders in and out of his chest.

“You will be more comfortable without clothes,” Lotor murmurs in his ear, sending full-body shivers all the way through Lance. His toes curl. He ruts forwards mindlessly and mindlessly he shakes his head. Lotor ignores him, moving back enough to reach the zip that runs from Lance’s nape to the base of his spine and drawing down the zipper. “Yes, pretty,” Lotor tells him.

He lifts Lance to his feet as he pulls Lance’s bodysuit off his shoulders, down his arms, to his wrists. He uses his claws to shred the arms economically in order to take it off, before rolling it down Lance’s waist, over his hips, down his thighs. It is shredded again to get it past Lance’s ankle-cuffs, and then he’s standing naked and hard, flushed all across his body.

Lotor’s body crowds against Lance’s back again; his leg pushes Lance’s thighs apart and his hands claim his belly and his throat.

“You will give your body to my pleasure,” Lotor rumbles, the vibrations shifting through Lance’s body as he speaks. 

Frantic and feeling less sane by the second, Lance shakes his head.

Claws extend to dig into Lance’s skin, pinching, clarifying his clouded brain just long enough for him to hear Lotor say, “you deny me? You would deny me to the point of torture?” and long enough for Lance to say, “yes.”

He is thrown and lands sprawled out on his back, Lotor above him. The yellow eyes flash from fury to amusement as he watches Lance whine, grit his teeth, sob. Lotor crouches at his side and says, “defy me, then. It will be worse when I ask again.” 

“Fuck you,” Lance says, glaring even as he can’t stop his hips in their futile search for friction.

Lotor’s slow, arrogant grin appears. He touches Lance’s cheek just like he did yesterday when he’d called him pretty the first time. It’s their only point of contact, and Lance’s whole body aches for him.

“You’re almost pretty enough for me to offer that,” Lotor tells him, grin breaking wider as Lance grunts first in confusion and then in involuntary want as he imagines getting to fuck something, the friction, _fuck_. Lotor strokes his finger to the corner of Lance’s mouth and leaves it there, teasing, daring Lance to suck it. To open his mouth and pull it in, taste it. “But sadly your cock is too small to give me any satisfaction,” Lotor continues. He glances at it, leaking against Lance’s stomach, red and straining. “And my satisfaction is the point, remember.”

Lance remembers. Lance remembers and he does not open his mouth. He doesn’t open his mouth and he keeps his eyes open and he remembers exactly who did this to him.

“F-fuck,” Lance snarls, writhing onto his side away from Lotor’s finger and reaching, grabbing handfuls of deep purple sheet. His grip tightens until his fingers ache and his hands are so tangled he couldn’t reach for Lotor or his cock if he tried. He breathes out harsh and angry and tries again. “Fuck. You.”

Lotor’s grin stays in place even as his eyes narrow. Lance, watching him, feels a coil of triumph, tiny and bright, unfurl in his stomach. It’s just as good as sex.

“Fuck you.” He says again. “ _Comemierda comelón,_ fuck you, fuck you--”

He throws all the insults he knows at Lotor and for second feels like Hunk, Shiro, Keith, his older sister – the people he’d learned to curse from in so many languages – are there with him in spirit. Even as his hands are wrenched up above his head, away from his cock, and bound to the wall behind him, he feels strong. Even as Lotor spits at his face in disgust, leaving him there, straining and foulmouthed, he feels brave. Lotor returns with something Lance registers from far off as being a muzzle; metallic, curved to fit a face, straps for round the head. Lotor slaps him across the face when Lance tries to put up a fight, leaving him dazed, and, when his cock’s urgency brings him back to a kind of clarity, Lance finds his mouth has been covered, leaving him unable to speak.

His moans now are completely cancelled out as he writhes through the agony of his arousal, so he screams. He is ignored by Lotor as he moves about the room, as he dims the lights, settles on the bed. He has been dismissed from notice. If he could move, Lance would be on him. He doesn’t know if he’d be trying to kill or fuck him, he just knows he exhausts himself against his restraints until he manages to flip himself to his stomach. He ruts against the bed sheets past the point of pleasure, into pain, screaming unheard except in his own head, unable to come.

Hours later, exhausted, he sleeps.

~~~

Forcibly rolled over, Lance sees Lotor and a Galra soldier stood above him.

“Hold him,” Lotor says, and the soldier takes Lance’s wrists and heaves him up to his knees, holding his wrists above him as he takes hold of Lance’s throat with his other hand and puts pressure on Lance’s calves with a foot.

Lotor holds another bowl of fruit.

Lance gets exactly one “fuck you” out as the muzzle comes off before Lotor grabs his jaw and squeezes, before the soldier’s hand at Lance’s throat moves to hold his mouth open.

Kneeling, Lotor presses his body against Lance’s front as he drops pieces of the fruit into his mouth. Lance has the choice of swallowing or choking, and after the third piece he is past struggling. Lotor begins to tease, holding pieces of fruit above Lance’s mouth as Lance strains towards them, begging for more.

The bowl empty again, Lotor stays pressed against Lance as Lance ruts against his hip, sobbing, and Lotor says, “beg me to use you.”

It would be as easy as snapping a thread. Lance sobs into Lotor’s shoulder and he aches, he wants, and he still somehow manages to shake his head.

The heat against Lance’s body is gone before he registers that Lotor is, too.

He is alone again with a body he wants to rip to bits.

~~~

The soldier comes back at some point, same as yesterday, just as Lance comes back to himself. His cock is soft, sore, and he feels far away from his own body. It should terrify him.

He’s past that, maybe.

“Your commander’s a real creep,” Lance tells the soldier as he’s deposited back on the bed after his piss and walk. His voice is strained and dull and not a sound he ever wants to hear from himself; he shuts his mouth, biting into his lip.

“My Prince,” the soldier murmurs. Lance snaps his head around to stare at him, not expecting a response. “You are in Prince Lotor’s quarters.”

Lance struggles to sit upright. “Like… Prince of the Galran Empire? Lotor is Zarkon’s son?”

The soldier hesitates at the door so briefly it’s hardly noticeable. He nods, and leaves.

It’s not important information except for how it explains why Lotor knows ( _is engaged to_ ) Allura, explains the way Lotor… demands. It’s too— Lance’s brain twists away from him when he tries to think about it, so he stops.

The soldier is safer, more interesting. He talked. Maybe… maybe Lance can do what Hunk would do.

It’s a tiny flare of hope and Lance wants to cradle it to his chest. Protect it.

He needs it.

~~~

Wasting what’s left of his Lotor-free time by staring at the ceiling doesn’t appeal, so, instead, he wastes it examining the walls that form part of the bed’s frame.

First, though, he takes one of the sheets and makes himself a toga with it. He’s handcuffed and trembling, – still, it feels like, from last night, but he thinks it might be from coming off whatever drug was in the fruit – so it takes way longer than it should and three times he nearly falls over from where he’s kneeling. Every time his hands touch his bare skin his pulse jumps and he has to steady himself. But he does it. He feels a little more put together once it’s done, the soft material cool against his skin, and now he’s not naked, for what that’s worth.

He knees over to the nearest wall when he’s done, taking a good look at it in the hope he’ll find a place where the woven metal has frayed or corroded or shows any sign of wear-and-tear he can take advantage of.

The walls are actually made of thin wires woven together into larger strands that then weave into patterns, which is cool. Very Galra. Lance idly thinks Keith would fit right in here with the whole military emo vibe he has going. He makes a note to not ever tell Keith that, though. Dude has enough issues with the part-Galra thing to be going on with. 

If Lance managed to get a little piece unpicked from the pattern, maybe he could… stab Lotor in the eye? Stab at his cuffs hopefully until they malfunction by some miracle? Maybe if he could unpick a long enough strand, he could use it as a garrote. Lance’s stomach drops at the idea and he decides not to think about what he’d do about the guards outside if he ever put that plan into practice, because he knows it’s more a bad idea than any kind of strategy. He makes it round the whole of the bed without finding any flaws in the workmanship, though, so he settles down in front of the corner furthest from the door and starts trying to make his own flaw in the metal.

Before long his fingernails are broken and one of them is bleeding. He sucks on it hard and gets back to it, pulling at the wires futilely.

He’s so engrossed in his work that he’s not ready for Lotor’s return when it happens, earlier than yesterday, he thinks. He spares no more than a glance in Lance’s direction before going about the routine of taking off his armor, sending a tray over to the bed with what Lance now acknowledges is definitely a princely gesture. Lance hesitates, wanting to turn to face Lotor so he knows he’s coming and wanting just as much to stay facing away from him like ignoring each other could continue all night. After a moment, he turns.

Lotor lands on the bed a minute later, and Lance notes with some shock that he’s still in most of his armor. His helmet is gone, hands and feet bare, and he’s cloak-less, but he looms larger than he does when without his armor even as he sits between Lance and the tray as he had yesterday. _As though everything in-between were, what, a weird interlude?_ Lance thinks, feeling oddly detached from what’s happening. 

Too focused on Lotor, Lance doesn’t notice the food until Lotor is bringing a bowl of something beige and lumpy towards him, scooping a spoonful and bringing it to Lance’s mouth.

“Here,” Lotor says.

Lance keeps his mouth firmly shut, keeping his eyes on Lotor as he brings his hands up to swipe at the spoon. It’s pulled out of his trajectory by a smiling Lotor, his expression looking for all the universe like one of a benevolent caretaker.

“Oh, pretty boy,” he says. “You can’t live on fruit alone.” Lance turns his head away from the food (it smells so good, not sweet at all) but keeps looking right at Lotor, watching as his smile widens and he asks Lance, “would you prefer something to excite you again? The feeling is quite addictive, I’ve heard. I have a bowl of _khobi_ fruit right here. I wanted to give you something to help you keep your strength up, first, but perhaps I should take your refusal to mean that you are eager to begin humiliating yourself against my sheets again.”

Lance feels heat flood his cheeks and has to imagine Shiro sitting next to him to stop himself from opening his mouth to speak. Imaginary Shiro puts his hand on Lance’s shoulder and tells him, _hold strong_.

“Or perhaps you are ready to take me up on my offer,” Lotor wonders, and when Lance doesn’t externally react (imaginary Shiro squeezes Lance’s shoulder), Lotor drops the kindly façade to say, “oh, pretty, so untrusting. _Garshan!_ ”

Lance startles at the shout and feels like his stomach drops out when the door opens and the Galra soldier steps in. Maybe it’s not even the same one, the helmet makes it hard to tell. Lance stays still, knowing whatever happens now isn’t going to change if he tries and fails to run like his trembling legs want to.

But Lotor gestures the soldier to come towards him rather than Lance, and Lotor hands him the spoon and says, “eat it.” Without hesitation, the soldier does.

“Do you feel any different?” Lotor asks. When the soldier says, “no, your Highness,” Lotor turns to Lance and tells him, “it would hardly be in my best interests to poison my guard, or to send him into a state where he cannot help but rut against anything that stays still long enough.” He gestures to the soldier with a flick of his wrist. “Since our prisoner cannot feed himself, you do it. Make him if you have to.”

Lance can follow Lotor’s logic, but he still thinks Lotor could probably call for a dozen more soldiers in the time it took Lance to use Lotor as a springboard and get over the bed’s walls, so he watches the soldier carefully as he comes towards Lance and keeps his mouth shut as the spoon comes towards him again. The soldier waits him out a moment as Lance watches for signs of the fruit taking in him, but quickly takes the option of force and slaps Lance back-handed across the mouth.

“Prince Lotor commands you to eat,” the soldier tells him, voice toneless, and watches as Lance gasps and brings his hand to his stinging cheek. There’s blood in his mouth – he must have bitten his cheek – and the Galra’s strength has made his head rattle. When the soldier grabs his chin and wrenches his mouth open, Lance doesn’t resist. He doesn’t know if it’s aftereffects of the fruit or what, but the touch makes him feel unsteady, like Lotor in armor had.

The food is as lumpy feeling and beige tasting as it’d looked, clogging up his mouth so he swallows automatically as the soldier feeds him spoonful after spoonful with no interest in letting him keeping up. Lotor watches Lance struggle as he eats his own leisurely meal. His gaze feels hot on Lance’s skin.

When Lance has choked down the last bit of food Lotor says, “good,” and tells the soldier to “stand by the door and watch.” With a “yes, your Highness,” the soldier does as he is told, standing with his arms straight at his sides, hands clenched, and even though Lance can’t see his eyes, he feels them.

The clinking sounds of Lotor moving things around on the tray pulls Lance’s attention back in his direction, and he watches as Lotor uncovers a bowl of _khobi_ fruit as promised. The smell hits Lance, making his tongue feel heavy in his mouth. He’d tried to get ready for this all day, hoping if he just pretended like it didn’t happen he’d be fine, but he’s not. It’s not addictive at all, the fruit; he wants to tell Lotor as much. Other than in the moments immediately after having some, Lance isn’t overtaken by the need to eat it. The smell is choking. It mingles with the smell of the room, the clove-y smell he’d noticed the first day that’s almost faded into the background, to create a sickly, deep smell. It’s something like sex. It’s cloying. Lance would rather start flaying his own skin off than eat any of that fruit voluntarily.

But he knows now he’s not getting what he wants. He sits quietly, breathing shallowly, waiting for Lotor to make his play and knowing he’s as unprepared to counter it as he’s been this whole time.

 _All I am is a kid with a gun,_ he thinks. _And without that, I’ve got nothing._

“You have been very uncooperative,” Lotor tells him. He’s at the other side of the bed, but he talks softly; somehow it feels like he’s talking in Lance’s ear, anyway. It’s intimate. It’s chilling. “And you have been far more stubborn than I anticipated,” he continues. “It has been interesting. But this afternoon I had a thought; I must have someone take your friend something to eat – unlike you, the Green Paladin has eaten nothing since they were captured. Your friend’s situation grows quite dire, I would have thought. Here, would you like to see them?”

Lance doesn’t have time to react before Lotor brings out a small metal rectangle which he snaps in half and then pulls apart, forming a square of space filled in with a partially opaque screen viewable from both sides. He taps at it, and suddenly there’s Pidge. 

Lotor hadn’t lied; they’re not in a good way. They’re in a small cell, smaller than their rooms on the Castle-Ship by half. There’s no furniture, no bed. Pidge is lying on the floor, staring up. For a heart-stopping second, long enough for Lance to gasp, pained, Pidge looks dead. Then they blink. Their eyelids flutter like they’re having trouble keeping their eyes open but Lance sees as Pidge’s mouth moves. Lance thinks they might be counting – what, he doesn’t know, but it looks methodical, more like something to pass the time than anything that’s going to save them. And sure, Lance never understands what Pidge is doing and he frequently looks at them and thinks they’re doing nothing much when they’re actually inventing something that ends up saving them all three missions down the line, but still. It doesn’t look good.

The part of Lance that’d been expecting Pidge to burst in and save him any minute now shrivels up.

“Looks famished, poor thing,” Lotor says. “Of course, it’s the lack of water that will kill, not food, but every day without either… Well, you’re not so full that you don’t know how it feels, I’m sure.”

On the screen, Pidge shifts and moves onto their side, moving like they’re in pain. Lotor makes a strange noise – it takes Lance a moment to realize it’s meant to be sympathetic. He grits his teeth and doesn’t respond.

“Do you want to help?” Lotor asks. Lance doesn’t take his eyes off Pidge, doesn’t flinch. It doesn’t take a genius to know what’s happening, but he still wishes he could ask Pidge what he should do. He can’t though. He’s the one here, not Pidge. Not Shiro or Keith or Allura.

Slav has that thing about parallel universes, about probabilities, and Lance gets put on help-Slav duty sometimes because he’s the only one who doesn’t get annoyed more by it than Slav ends up annoyed by him. The first time, he’d asked Slav to explain and Slav had, kind of. Lance thinks he got the idea, anyway, but when he’d said, “so what you’re saying is: whatever could happen, has happened, somewhere?” Slav had given him a patronizing look and said, “don’t say that like it’s a good thing.”

But Lance still thinks it is. It’s not reassuring to think that, in other universes, the others are where he is now. It’s not reassuring to think: _somewhere, I never got captured. Somewhere I was quick enough to shoot Lotor before he touched me or hurt Pidge._ None of it’s reassuring. What happens in other universes doesn’t help make this one any less shit, or hard, or mean Lance doesn’t have to deal with his choices.

But he is pretty sure there being infinite parallel universes means Lotor dies an infinite number of times and in an infinite number of ways. Somewhere, Lance leaps across the bed and, even though the chances of it working are one in a million, somewhere he wraps his hands around Lotor’s throat and holds on until he’s dead. And yeah, that _is_ comforting. 

But Pidge is on the screen, and this universe’s Lance can’t take the one in a million chance. The Lance in this universe can only brace himself the best he can and nod. Of course he’ll help. What else is there?

Lance knew the grin and the teeth were coming and he does not flinch, but when Lotor puts the bowl of _khobi_ fruit between them, Lance involuntarily swallows.

“How about this, pretty,” Lotor says. “Either you eat the _khobi_ fruit, or I send it to your friend.” Lance weathers the blow of that by looking at Pidge and reminding himself they’re alive, both of them are. Lotor doesn’t seem to have that much interest in killing them, even. They just have to get through this. It’s Lance’s job now to do that; he has to get them through this. 

Lotor keeps going: “How much time would they spend examining it, do you think? How long do you think before it affects them? You know how enticing it smells. Perhaps, once they have eaten their fill, I could pay them a visit—”

“ _No._ ”

The reaction is instant, pulled out of Lance, giving Lotor exactly what he wants. Lance’s hands are clenched uselessly where he can’t do anything and he’s shaking not in fear now but in anger. Anger normally hits him slowly, slower than this at least; he resents people and stews over things and then shouts when he can’t take any more. Now, though, he’s just angry; suddenly, incandescently angry. It burns everything else away.

And just as suddenly it subsides, leaving him feeling hollow. This is what Lotor wanted, that reaction, that denial. And if Lance doesn’t follow through on it, Pidge gets hurt. Lotor’s had the ace in his hand this whole time. He’d just waited to get inside Lance’s head before using it.

“No?” Lotor asks. “Very well. Then you will eat it, pretty thing, and you will submit.” The hollow feeling in Lance sucks more of the anger out of him, the strength it’d given him for a moment going with it. Inside, he wants to scream. Outside, he holds onto his glare as Lotor tells him, “You will prepare yourself and you will ride my cock until I have taken my pleasure from your body. This you offer me, freely.” _This is the moment Allura would tell him he doesn’t know the meaning of the word_ , Lance thinks, and doesn’t say anything. Lotor adds, “And to you I offer this: your friend will be left alone, though I will send bland food and water to sustain them. No one will touch them. Do you agree to my terms?”

 _Never_ , Lance thinks. It sounds weary. It sounds regal, like Allura. It sounds angry, like Hunk. Fierce, like Pidge; determined, like Shiro; one step away from violence, like Keith, as always. It sounds like himself, just not in this universe. 

“Why are you doing this?” Lance asks. His voice cracks on the first word and it’s a miracle he makes it through the rest. Lotor doesn’t react to his weakness, but why would he? They both know he’s getting what he wants. 

Lotor shrugs, though. “Curiosity,” he says. “I have never fucked a human before. It will be interesting to see if you survive.”

“So because you can,” Lance says. “Because you’re a Prince and you get whatever you want and think you always will.”

Lotor acknowledges the statement with a half-nod, like his neck’s too royal to bend. “Over ten thousand years of precedent exists to support it, so yes, I suppose I do. Your answer, now, pretty.”

Lance looks away from him to watch Pidge again for several moments that Lotor, surprisingly, lets him have. Lance keeps watching them breathe on the bed, still talking to themselves, as Lance lets the hollow feeling overtake him until he’s feeling distant enough to say, “Not the fruit. I’m not eating it again. It shouldn’t make a difference; you just want to fuck me, whether I’m out of my mind or not shouldn’t really matter. You don’t ever touch Pidge. And I get to watch them eat, after—after you get what you want. So, my answer’s yes.”

Lotor’s grin shifts, becomes a satisfied, predatory smile. “Those terms are acceptable,” he says, putting the fruit back on the tray. He lifts it and sends it to the soldier at the door, saying, “take that out and return with the bag in the corridor.”

Lance ignores the soldier leaving, watching Lotor for movement. But he stays at the other side of the bed, for now. Watching Lance back.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” Lotor tells him, voice soft and rumbling again and not a relief at all. Lance wants to be immune to the shiver it sends through him by now, but with what he’s agreed to, what it means, what it’ll look like, _feel_ like, he can’t stop himself. “You,” Lotor continues, “are going to stretch yourself for me. You’re going to stretch yourself so wide you could take your own hand. You’ll keep going until I tell you to stop. And then you’re going to come to me, you’re going to sit yourself on my cock and ride it hard, and you’re going to make me come. And I won’t touch you at all. I will not force you to do anything.”

The soldier re-enters and gives Lotor a small bag, like a drawstring leather pouch, and as Lotor takes it and orders the soldier back to his post by the door, watching them, Lance takes a second to close his eyes and shake through the horror.

He opens them to Lotor pushing a bottle into Lance’s hands and saying “release” while touching Lance’s handcuffs. They open; Lotor tosses them to the other side of the bed. He puts his hands to Lance’s chest at the edge of his toga and lets his claws extend. “Let’s begin by getting rid of this,” he says, as he begins to rip the toga down the middle. Lance focuses on rubbing his wrists, blocking out Lotor’s eyes on him.

He’s been naked in front of people before, including obviously both of the people in this room. It’s just he’s never been naked in front of people he was going to let fuck him before. Or people he’s going to let watch while he fingers himself, before they fuck him.

He goes to think, _how would the others deal with this?_ and immediately shuts it down. It doesn’t matter. They can’t help him with this. If he has his way, this’ll happen and then it’ll never matter again. They’ll never know, and he’ll never find out what they’d have done.

Lotor leans back, his body heat going with him and the difference making Lance shiver in a way he just wishes would stop already, fuck. Lotor reclines backwards, leaning on an elbow and looking for all the world like a purple Roman master waiting on a slave. He waves his hand, not breaking the illusion, and commands, “begin.”

Lance, flushing, closes his eyes and counts three breaths in and out before he opens them again. He catalogues: he’s naked; Lotor is over there. The bottle in his hands is transparent, filled with something gelatin-like that he guesses is meant to work as lube. He has to start stretching himself now.

He reaches behind him, grabbing a cushion to lean back against so he doesn’t cramp his neck or back. Hands shaking, he squeezes the bottle until he gets some of the lube-substitute in his palm. It’s clear, faintly blue tinted, doesn’t have a smell, and is otherwise exactly like the lube he used for years at home. He spreads it over the fingers of one hand, doing just two at first automatically before remembering and doing a third and fourth. He’s only ever done two, himself, and hasn’t done that in months, since they left Earth, because he didn’t exactly want to ask Allura or Coran where they kept the lube. _Hand_ , Lotor had said. Lance hopes that’d just been dirty talk. He doesn’t know how he’s meant to take even three of his own fingers.

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck_ , he thinks, and then tells himself to shut up.

He shifts, putting the bottle down beside his hip and bringing his legs up, glancing at Lotor for a hot second before skittering away from that because the way Lotor’s looking at him is— It’s scorching. It feels like a weight on his chest.

Lance brings his legs up and quickly realizes that without the cuffs off his ankles he’s going to have to go on his side to do this. He holds his lube-covered hand out of the way as he tries to shift over that way gracefully and feels himself flush brighter with humiliation when he doesn’t manage it.

He can’t see Lotor from this position, though.

He reaches down.

He doesn’t bother teasing, doesn’t take it slow. The first finger he manages with a stretch but no pain, biting his lip because it feels all wrong, doing this. He’s soft against his thigh. But enjoying it won’t make it feel better tomorrow, so he pushes away the weirdness, doing his best to block out everything. He closes his eyes.

With his eyes closed, the breathing of the other two men in the room is louder, and that smell, the cloves, that’s harder to ignore, too. He pushes in with that one finger, ignores the stretch, pulls back and in again until he’s ready.

 _Do it, do it, do it_ , he chants at himself, psyching himself up. And he pushes in with the second finger, not stopping until it’s as deep as he can get it on the first push. He hears himself make a noise, and then hears, “open your eyes, pretty,” and obeys; there’s no point in defiance.

Lotor has moved to recline in Lance’s view. He’s not even sure Lotor can see what Lance is doing anymore, but maybe he can because he says, “that’s it, go on, look at me as you stretch yourself to take me,” and Lance hates himself as he does.

Maybe it would be better if he’d eaten the fruit.

 _Enjoying it won’t make it easier_ , he reminds himself, pushing deeper and forcing his fingers to part at the deepest point he can reach. He pushes in and out, listening to the squelch and telling himself it’s getting easier, it must be, he’s going to break if this keeps going this slow.

He pushes a third finger in too soon, too deep, and it knocks the breath out of him. He forces himself to relax and keeps going. He hits his prostate once and flinches with his whole body, but can’t stop the noise he makes. Lotor smirks at him, delighted. Lance makes an effort to avoid doing more than brushing it from then on. He’s not in the mood to be betrayed by his body again.

His wrist is aching, his fingers too; when he’d used to do this himself, he’d do it at the end of a long, indulgent session when he was already relaxed down to his bones and holding himself back from coming. He’s never done this for so long, and as it goes on he finds himself flinching more, getting more tense. He has to make a conscious effort not to tense around his fingers, and that’s hard with Lotor’s eyes on him making him feel like a whore.

“More lubricant, I think,” Lotor murmurs. Lance glances where Lotor’s looking and realizes he’s set the screen up so it’s reflecting Lance’s ass, letting Lotor recline where Lance has to see him and still get to watch what he’s doing. He can’t help himself, he tenses all over and his hole clenches round his fingers, making him flinch. Lotor laughs.

Reaching for the bottle, Lance obediently removes his fingers and adds more lube to them. It helps the slide of his three fingers back into him but it feels disgusting, that extra wetness tilting Lance over the edge from _too tight_ to _too filthy_.

And the noises as he moves his fingers in and out are worse, too. Loud enough that the soldier can definitely hear them where he stands at the door, watching impassively.

“Add another finger,” Lotor orders. “Not the smallest one; add the large.”

“I—” Lance stops moving for a moment, staring. Lotor doesn’t have to say anything to get Lance to do it, though, just turns to the soldier and opens his mouth and Lance says, “ _okay_ ” in a very small voice, folding his thumb up beside his other fingers and pushing, slowly.

It hurts. _Fuck,_ it hurts. He tries adding the other fingers and then the thumb, and then tries it the other way. The thumb first is marginally better, but by the time he adds his ring finger he’s still gasping and biting the knuckle of his other hand.

He’s still looking at Lotor, sure, but somewhere in the pain it’d tipped from numb stare and into something furious.

He can’t move all his fingers in and out at the same time, now, it’s too much, so instead he moves his fingers and then his thumb, slowly stretching still only because he’s not sure Lotor won’t make him take his whole hand like he threatened.

The pain lessens, and Lance manages to find a rhythm. His wrist hurts more and more each time, but he keeps going.

Lotor sighs. “Stop,” he says, not seeming surprised when Lance stops immediately with relief. Lotor tosses the leather pouch to him and it lands heavily on the bed. “I have a prior engagement that will take my attention for the next few hours, I am afraid. But there’s something in there for your hungry hole, pretty.”

Lance stares at him, brain short-circuiting. He was… going to be left here. Lance glances at Lotor’s crotch, something he’d been avoiding, and sees no bulge, nothing to show Lotor’d been anything but pleasantly entertained by the sight of making Lance finger himself.

The hollowness in him expands. That’d just been humiliation, then. He reaches for the bag and pulls out what can only be a plug, realizes that’s what this is, too.

“Go on, pretty thing,” Lotor says. “Keep yourself open for me until I am ready to use you.”

The plug is made of a material he doesn’t recognize; metal but slick. It has a wide base and a bulb no wider but that comes to a point. He doesn’t want it in him. He doesn’t want any of this.

He spreads more lube on it, reaches behind himself and lines it up. It sinks into him slowly; he struggles with the bulb and then with the base, biting at his knuckles to stop from crying out louder than the gasps and whines he can’t stop.

And then it’s in and Lance realizes he’s got tears dripping off the end of his nose.

Lotor takes his limp hands, cuffing his wrists together again and wiping lube off on Lance’s face as he draws away.

“Don’t cry, pretty, it’ll be over soon,” Lotor tells him.

~~~

Lance keeps himself feeling numb and hollow for as long as he can because it’s better than the humiliation of the soldier’s impassive eyes still on him and the feel of the plug heavy inside him.

He does his best not to move; whimpers when he does.

He thinks about how hungry and dehydrated Pidge must be. 

He wonders what the others are doing right now, if they’ve found them yet or if they’re anywhere even close.

He doesn’t want to wonder how Allura knew Lotor before, but he does. Did she like him, ever? Were they in love?

Thinking of the others hurts like the ache of his family on Earth and he wonders if he’s ever going to see them again, either of his families. He wants to. But at the same time a very small part of him hopes he doesn’t; can’t imagine this being okay enough, far enough away from him, to be around them without needing to scream for what he had and ruined. It’s a tiny seed of absolute despair, for now. He buries it.

“Are you getting off on this?” he asks the soldier, unable to keep his tone even, asking because as numb as he is now he’s going to need an answer to that later. Maybe. Maybe he never wants that answer. No, he never wants that question, is what he wants.

The soldier doesn’t answer, anyway.

And Lance tells himself: _they’ll come for you. And you won’t tell them and they won’t know and it’ll be okay eventually_.

~~~

“Get him up.”

Lotor’s re-entry pushes Lance into fight-or-flight mode, his whole body tensing and instantly releasing in the god-fucking-awful pain-pleasure-discomfort-pain of the plug.

“Put him over there on his knees.”

Lance is hoisted up by his wrists by the Galra soldier in a way that’s become familiar over the last couple days, but this time his body isn’t his. He bites his lip to shut off the whimpers, the ones he can catch, and keeps his eyes shut tight to fight back the burn of furious tears shocked out of him.

He’s put on his feet and is frog-marched over to Lotor’s rooms’ sitting area, walking awkwardly both from the ankle cuffs and the fucking thing up his ass. The soldier turns him to face the nearly-a-couch, back to the screen opposite it, and pushes on his shoulder to get him to go down. Lance considers fighting it, but what’s the point? He goes as gracefully as he can (which isn’t), scuffing his knees against a hard silicone floor.

The soldier leaves him there. The floor, other than being hard, doesn’t register on his senses in a way that’s weird; it’s not colder or warmer than his skin against it. It doesn’t store his body heat.

His breath is coming too quick and he doesn’t know why he’s thinking about the fucking floor but he is, and it’s weird, this whole thing is _fucked_.

Lotor’s in his space suddenly, behind him; he knows because the temperature suddenly rises along his back. Fingers touch the back of his head, touching his hair gently and pushing just as gently forward, so Lance has to make the choice to ignore it or go where he’s pushed.

He goes where he’s pushed, bends forward, moaning as the plug shifts inside him and makes the breath in his chest catch against a sob, bending until his forehead rests against the couch in front of him.

The heat comes closer and he feels Lotor’s breath against the back of his neck like he’s kneeling right over him without touching. He feels it as Lotor shifts back again and then the plug is being pushed further into him and he bites back a shout.

Kneeling like this, bent over, he guesses he must look filthy. Like a whore. He clenches his hands in front of him and tries not to picture it, but it’s too late. He imagines one of the others (Shiro morphs into Keith morphs back into Shiro) busting in the door right now to rescue him and seeing him like this and wants to die. He needs his brain to fucking _stop_ , to get quiet, but it won’t; his brain’s always been too loud.

Lotor continues to push and pull at the plug, using it to play with Lance’s rim as Lance gasps, groans, whines at the strain. He could kick back right now and he might have the reach in his ankle cuffs to get Lotor in the balls (if he has them, _fuck_ , what has Lance got himself into?) or at least threaten it.

But: Pidge. So he won’t. He doesn’t. He bites into his cheek until there’s fresh blood in his mouth and presses semi-circles into his palms with his fingernails.

Lotor pushes the plug in deep as it goes, drawing one last choked off groan from Lance, and draws away from him. Lance hears the word “stretch” and feels Lotor grab one of his ankles, pulling it away from the other one further than the glowing energy connecting them should have let them go. Lance struggles not to fall as he’s forced to widen the gap between his knees until he’s kneeling wide, knees wider than his hips, as wide as his shoulders. “Lock,” Lotor says, letting Lance’s ankle drop, and Lance realizes he can no longer move his ankles closer to each other. He couldn’t close his legs now if--

It’s easier to tell himself no one’s coming for him. _No one’s coming, and at least they’ll never know,_ he thinks. Its selfish (because: Pidge) and its terrifying but at least it’s not another humiliation. They’ll never know he knelt like this, holding a plug he put there himself in his ass and letting Lotor spread him open how he wants.

The hair at the back of Lance’s head is grabbed suddenly and he is pulled back up to kneel upright, unable to relieve the pain because he’s so unbalanced so the pain in his scalp and the other pain in his ass force an “ah! _Fuck!_ ” out of him. With his knees so much further apart he has to shift constantly to keep his balance and the plug is forced deeper all the time, hitting where he doesn’t want it over and over until Lance is shaking so hard his handcuffs clank against each other constantly.

Lotor taps a finger to his lip and says, “we have had words about that mouth of yours, pretty pet,” and Lance thinks _pet_ , but nods, shaking. Lotor takes it for the apology Lance wishes it weren’t and takes his finger back, murmuring, “good boy.”

He comes to stand in front of Lance, his crotch inches from Lance’s face. Lance looks past him at the wall until Lotor says, “undress me.”

Lotor doesn’t look at him, looking straight ahead instead as if Lance is nothing. Just a _pet_. He’s stripped himself of his armor again, leaving just the bodysuit to take off. And once that’s gone, Lance will finally know what he’s got himself into. Unsteady, Lance can’t stand, but he brings his hands up to Lotor’s wrist where his suit narrows to a tight band that’s wrapped around several times and then tucked into a knot.

Getting the knot undone is impossible with his hands cuffed unless he’s willing to use his teeth to hold one end, and he quickly realizes he’s going to have to get willing quickly if this is going to happen at all. Torn between getting this done as soon as possible and putting it off as if it’ll never happen, Lance nonetheless leans forward and takes one strand of the knot into his mouth, grabbing the other with his torn up fingernails and tugging.

He has to do the same with the other wrist, and when that’s done he avoids looking at the identical wraps around Lotor’s ankles to work instead at the one at his hip, because at least it doesn’t mean bending over. 

The whole time he works, Lotor ignores him.

The knot at Lotor’s hip undone, Lance is able to pull the material across Lotor’s chest apart, revealing a chest littered with scars and a taught, furred stomach. (Lance mentally recoils; he’s been doing his best to ignore the fur.) Lotor is too tall for him to get the material over his shoulders even if the suit weren’t knotted at his neck, but either Lotor takes pity on him or just prefers him on his knees, because he lifts his own hands to start work on the knots at his throat, leaving those at his ankles to Lance.

Lance is careful not to touch Lotor as he steadies himself with his hands pressed into the floor as he bends forward. He closes his eyes and tries desperately not to picture how he must look, but it’s like when someone says not to imagine a blue elephant and now that’s all you can do. His cock hangs soft between his parted legs, he knows. Anyone behind him would be able to see everything; his cock, his balls, the plug stretching his ass obscenely. They’d see his cock twitch as the plug shifts in him and he settles.

The ties at Lotor’s ankles are the worst. Lance does his best not to breathe or think or listen, but he hears Lotor say, “clench your hole,” clearly all the same. He freezes. _Lotor can’t- he’s not at an angle to see, is this just torture?_ he wonders, but remembers the screen behind him and the other screen from before and shudders in embarrassment.

Lotor pulls his foot from Lance’s shaking grasp and uses it to push down on his neck when Lance doesn’t respond, pushing Lance’s face into the floor.

“Clench around the plug, pretty,” Lotor tells him.

Lance does. He sobs, the feeling making his gut twist and his cock twitch and his throat close up.

“Again,” Lotor tells him, taking his foot off Lance’s neck and putting it back next to Lance’s slack hands. Lance obeys. And obeys again a moment later when Lotor tells him again even as he reaches out to the tie at Lotor’s ankle.

When the last tie comes undone, Lance takes his hands back and shoves his own fingers in his mouth to stop the sobs he can’t otherwise control, shaking, shuddering, until he gets himself back, until he shuts himself off where he can’t feel his body again, a temporary respite.

“Good boy,” he hears Lotor say, and doesn’t let it touch him.

He pushes himself up to kneel upright again, coming face to face with Lotor, naked, sitting on the couch. His cock is—it’s big. The fur around the base is thicker than on the rest of his body and it’s darker, but the cock itself is furless. Something Lance would be grateful for if he had any room for such a useless feeling. The shape is wrong; it’s too wide at the base in an echo of the plug, and the tip is blunt, nearly flat. Soft, still, it hangs alone between Lotor’s spread legs, exposing thin lines of a darker purple to its coloring that snake up it in no particular pattern, looking slightly ridged.

At its widest, it’s as wide as a Lance’s wrist. Lotor watches him as he brings his hand to it and begins to stroke. It’s long. It dwarfs Lance’s cock.

Lotor doesn’t give Lance any orders as he continues to touch himself, just watches him with a look of faint interest on his face for a few moments before directing his gaze behind Lance, to where Lance knows the screen is. He doesn’t glance back, grits his teeth and firms his shoulders. Watches past Lotor’s shoulder and hopes a star dies and becomes a black hole inside his stomach in the next thirty seconds, swallowing him from the inside, because he can’t touch the hope that the others come get him in time to stop this without freaking out his breathing and his brain.

“Come here,” Lotor orders, taping his thigh. Lance tries to avoid looking at the cock but finds himself noting it’s been lubed and feeling nothing. He has the choice to stand and walk to Lotor or to stay on his knees and shuffle, and knows falling over trying to get up would not only be more humiliating than the alternative, it’d hurt and it’d just waste more time.

If this is happening, and it is, he wants it done.

He knees over until he’s between Lotor’s legs, his eyes level with the tip of Lotor’s cock.

Hands under his armpits lift him like he’s a child, startling him into struggling until that hurts, making him gasp, and finds himself sitting on Lotor’s lap, his feet on the couch either side of Lotor’s hips, Lotor’s cock, too hot, pressed against his own. The rope of energy between his ankles doesn’t seem to care about the person between them, keeping his feet at exactly that distance apart they were locked to. His bound hands are looped over Lotor’s neck, a parody of an embrace.

Lotor’s smile is the same amused one from their first meeting as he asks, “do you need a reminder of our terms? Do I need to remind you why you agreed?”

Lance pushes the picture of Pidge on the ground of that cell out of his mind as quickly as it comes and he shakes his head no. He forces himself to stop because he might have kept going, otherwise. It’d be a useless protest. He doesn’t want this to happen and it will anyway.

Lotor reaches behind Lance and tugs at the plug, pulling out, pushing in again once, before he rips it out in one firm pull and laughs as Lance cries out, trembling against him. His hole clenches around nothing as he gets himself back under control, momentarily imagining Hunk’s hand rubbing his back like he’s just feeling homesick, in need of a hug, and not about to fuck himself on Galra cock. He uses his arms on Lotor’s shoulders to steady himself, straightens his back, pushes Hunk out of his head, and lifts himself up and over Lotor’s cock with the mantra _get it over with_ going through his head over and over. Lotor’s holding the base of his cock to keep it still and that’s all the help Lance gets as he lowers himself.

The cock’s tip is hot like a brand as it hits Lance’s skin and as he gasps he reorients himself until it hits his hole where it gives way. Open mouthed, hands aching as they tighten around nothing, Lance pushes himself down onto it.

It burns. He’s struggling to breathe as he pushes down on it, the heat where heat shouldn’t be more than the stretch making him tense despite knowing that’ll only make it worse. He’s sweating and the tip is barely in him, the rest of Lotor too close and too hot, making his skin react to try to cool him down. It’s too much and he forgets for a second that he’s not allowed to stop, going to pull off.

“It won’t be any easier the next time,” Lotor tells him. Lance blinks at him, turning his head into his arm to wipe the sweat from his forehead as he sees Lotor leaning back in the chair, arms stretched across the back of it, a caricature of ease. “Lower yourself back down,” he orders, and Lance obeys.

He’s right, it’s no less hot and he’s no less tight the second time, but Lance closes his eyes and focuses on the muscles in his legs where they’re beginning to shake to push through the pain. The tip slides deeper. And then a little deeper still.

Lance becomes aware of ridges on the cock inside him and realizes he’s taken the tip, realizes too that the worst of the heat is in the tip and the ridges. The rest of the cock is no hotter than Lance’s own skin, feeling cool now against the walls of his insides as he gasps, groans, and lowers himself further.

His legs are shaking badly enough he’s not sure he’ll make it down before he falls on it when Lotor turns his head to the side and says, “bring a drink.”

Lance’s throat rasps on his next gasp, suddenly desperate, desperate like he’s never felt before except under the influence of _khobi_ fruit. He looks at Lotor, trembling, close to begging, and watches his amused smile before deciding it’s not worth his breath to ask. Lotor will do as he wants, and Lance will have to keep going regardless.

He pushes himself down further as if to reinforce the point to his brain.

When the soldier presents a pitcher and glass to Lotor, Lance is fighting to breathe rather than hyperventilate, forcing himself to keep going because he has to be nearly at the base, now.

Lotor pours a drink, cups Lance’s cheek, and holds the glass to his lips. He forces Lance to sip or Lance would’ve drunk it all in a single gulp, and Lance doesn’t care if it’s _khobi_ juice (though it isn’t, he’ll know that smell for the rest of his life), he just needs the fluid more than he needs to not be fucking himself on a burning hot cock at the moment.

The liquid is cold, refreshing Lance’s throat but sitting on his stomach uneasily. He doesn’t care. In the time he’s focused on the drink, he sinks the rest of the way down Lotor’s cock until all he has left is the base.

Lotor brings the glass away from his mouth and brushes a thumb over Lance’s lips to collect any left, smearing it across his cheek. Lance nearly asks for more, watching as Lotor leans back into his at-ease pose, but decides against it again.

“You take my cock beautifully,” Lotor tells him, watching Lance shift as he tries to decide how he’s going to get the base inside, too. “You may ride me, now.”

Lance blinks away his shock. He… doesn’t have to take the base?

Okay.

Leaning forward for leverage, Lance pushes down on Lotor’s shoulders and pushes up through his thighs as he begins to move up, heaving breaths in as the ridges on the cock spiral heat through his insides the more he moves. The cock is big enough that he’s brushing against his prostate no matter what angle he’s at, but the heat makes it easier to ignore; his cock is soft, and though it twitches when he does hit the wrong angle it’s something he can ignore.

He pulls himself up half of Lotor’s cock before he shudders and makes himself push back down, leaning into it harder now he’s taken him once. His rim protests at the widening pressure less and less.

He reaches the base again almost before he expects it, forces himself to take one deep breath, and starts again.

“So little, to take my cock so well,” Lotor tells him, watching him with more interest than heat. “I think you have perhaps found your purpose.”

Lance ignores him, focusing on keeping the slide up steady, finding it’s easier on his thighs and arms that way.

“Perhaps I will keep you,” Lotor murmurs. “Your team certainly don’t deserve you; they don’t understand this filthy part of you like I do. The part willing to sell your body to the enemy.”

Lance tells himself it’s not getting to him. Reminds himself of the terms as he begins the slow sink back down on Lotor’s cock. 

“What would they think of you if they saw you now?” Lotor asks, grinning when Lance stutters in his movements, almost slipping enough to sit all the way down on Lotor’s cock. “I think they wouldn’t be able to keep their eyes of you, my beautiful boy. Allura--”

“Don’t talk about them.” It’s ripped out of Lance as he sits fully on Lotor’s cock, just the base, hot, beneath him. He sounds angry, he realizes. Righteous. It’s so inconsistent with how he actually feels that a part of him feels like laughing.

Lotor has stilled, too. He brings a hand to Lance’s cheek, brushing down it, over his mouth, his chin, to his neck. He grips it, startling a hitch in Lance’s breath as the hand around his throat tightens until he can’t breathe.

“I have no issue killing a man while he sits on my cock,” Lotor tells him. “I will talk how I wish.”

Lance, shuddering with the need for air, nods, and the hand relaxes.

Lance works hard to center himself, pulling up off Lotor’s cock again, but finds himself further unbalanced when Lotor adds, “next time you go down you will take the base as well, I think,” and waits until Lance nods again before taking his hand back from Lance’s neck and returning it to the back of the couch.

Lance rises up further than he has been doing, drawing out the inevitable, before closing his eyes and sinking down hard. He takes it quicker than he has up to now, hoping the momentum might help him and instead finding himself gasping, shuddering before he reaches the base, the tip spearing hot and deep as the cock’s ridges send fire through him from all directions, shifting with each inch he sinks.

And hits the base of Lotor’s cock, so much bigger than the plug or the rest of his cock, bigger than it’d seemed last time Lance sat above it. He gasps, tries to push down onto it, and feels like it’s impossible. He feels tears prick at his eyes, feels more than thinks _this isn’t fair_ , and rocks forward in the hope another angle will help.

He yelps as Lotor’s cock twitches, as hard as it already is, and he feels something hot, wet, inside him. At the same time, Lotor sighs, letting his head fall back, eyes half-lidded as he watches Lance struggle.

Lance had frozen at the feeling but forces himself to move again, rocking back this time in the hope it’ll at least put off the hand coming back around his throat a little longer even if he can’t take the whole thing, and feels the same thing again; the twitch, the heat, the wetness deep inside him.

Rocking forwards and backwards, he’s grinding on the cock and in doing so he’s stretching himself out, but as he does the cock inside him gets him wetter and wetter. Until, by the time he’s stretched enough to sink down all the way on Lotor’s cock, there’s wetness dripping out of him, pushed back in whenever he fucks down again.

The base of Lotor’s cock, slick as it is with Lotor’s pre-come, strains the edge of Lance’s limit whether he’s pulling up off it or pushing back onto it. Each time he lifts off it there’s an obscene squelch of a sound and his hole twitches, emptier, cool air in place of heat until he’s sinking down on it again.

“Tighten up after you come up off my knot,” Lotor tells him, still watching him with that lazy smile. When Lance does, he gasps at the feeling ( _too full on the knot, too empty as he pulls off it, full, tight, nearly right as he tightens down again_ ), flushing, his cock twitching. Lotor laughs at his expression, saying, “you make a very good whore, don’t you, pretty?”

Lance bites his cheek, sitting down too hard on Lotor’s knot to remind himself it hurts and he hates it, he doesn’t want it, he’s not a whore.

Lotor laughs again.

Lance is so slick now with Lotor’s pre-come that the slide is easier, the pattern of rocking forward and back as he rises up off Lotor’s knot, tightens, sinks down, it’s all just a beat he’s caught the rhythm to. The slick is dripping out of him, running down his thighs as it cools, so far past the point he’d got to when Lotor made him use too much lube earlier. He feels disgusting; he’s hot, wet between his thighs with so much come it’s crazy, sweating in the heat of Lotor’s body, of his cock, of his come.

“So pretty,” Lotor groans, his hips shifting up to meet Lance for the first time, the tip of his cock reaching deeper than ever, making Lance gasp as it shoots more hot pre-come inside him. His knot feels bigger now; Lance hadn’t paid attention when Lotor’d called it that, just acknowledged the thing had a name, but now he wonders if the translation into English had been more than just the closest word. Lotor groans again and says, “so pretty I almost want to share, show the universe what you look like whoring yourself out as you ride my cock. I knew you’d look good, stretching yourself down on it, getting sloppy on it, knew you would the second I saw you.”

Lance is too focused on the knot to pay much attention but he can’t stop the flush, the humiliation, the way _sloppy_ gets caught in his head and he knows it’ll be a long time before he can forget it. He rocks forward and sinks down, stretched to the point of pain again around the knot as he forces himself down on it.

The bigger it gets the more right Lotor is, though, he is sloppy. It’s disgusting. He’s—

 _Shut up_ , he tells himself.

“I wish your team could see you,” Lotor tells him, taunting, though he doesn’t seem to care when Lance ignores him. “I can just imagine Allura’s face. She’d be horrified, disgusted, but she’d try to hide it from you. You’d know, though, wouldn’t you?”

Lance shudders as his insides get wetter, hotter, and he shakes his head though he’s not sure what he’s saying no to. No, Allura wouldn’t think he was disgusting, or no, he wouldn’t know if she lied about it.

“I wonder what the others would do,” Lotor says, his hips shifting up to meet Lance each time he comes down now and pulling down as soon as Lance takes him all, speeding up the pace. “You can imagine far better than I can, I would think,” he adds, pausing to give Lance a chance to do just that. Lance is focused on trying not to tear on Lotor’s knot. Going on, Lotor says, “I wonder what the Champion would say if he saw you here,” laughing at Lance’s shudder, thinking it’s related. It is and it isn’t.

Lotor leans forward suddenly, shifting his cock in Lance so quickly, so sharply, it makes him shout, “ _fuck!_ ” and forces his cock nearly to full hardness. Lotor presses up against Lance’s front, face less than an inch from his, shifting his hips non-stop as he murmurs to Lance: “I gave him the same offer, you know. A ride on my cock in exchange for a lot of things. Water. Food. A chance to come, after I gave him the fruit you enjoyed so much.” Lotor pauses to watch as Lance slides down his cock and onto his knot, groaning into Lance’s mouth as his knot swells until Lance can’t take any more, he can’t, _fuck_.

“I offered him his heart’s desire, to let me do this to him,” Lotor tells him, shifting back against the couch again to watch Lance’s reaction and watch as Lance is forced to rock, grind into his cock, stuck as he is now on his still-swelling knot. “I wonder what he’d see when he looked at you now, caught on my knot.”

Lance doesn’t know, but just then he doesn’t know anything past the unbearable stretch as Lotor’s cock pulses slowly, as his knot continues to grow. He keeps grinding down on it because it helps to keep moving and because he’s not sure he can stop, and Lotor’s hips push and pull, still trying to fuck his knot in and out of Lance’s body until Lotor groans, his hips stilling, his knot stretching Lance until he cries out and shakes as he feels the heavy, hot pulsing of Lotor’s cock inside him.

“Keep moving,” Lotor tells him, his voice more rumble than ever as he comes.

Lance keeps grinding down on Lotor’s cock, tightening up involuntarily at each new shot of come inside him. Each time he does it, Lotor sighs, satisfied, stretched out and grinning, still watching Lance move on him.

His thighs already soaked, Lance doesn’t believe the feel of how much come is being pumped into him at first. It has to be an illusion, has to be because he’s a virgin and doesn’t know what he’s feeling. Galra dick is a bit different, sure, but each pulse of the cock inside him feels huge, too much, impossible.

Lotor reaches over for the drink left to their side, pouring a glass and taking a drink before letting Lance take the rest of it in sips again even as he continues to pulse inside Lance and as Lance continues to ride him out. 

“H-how long?” Lance manages to ask, realizing as he tries to speak that his throat is catching on tears and that a few have already spilled down his cheeks. Unable to wipe them away, he ignores them, rocking slower now as the frantic pushback from Lotor’s hips urging him faster stops.

“Will I keep you? As long as I want,” Lotor answers. Lance manages to say no and then cries out as another pulse of come inside him goes on longer than the others, his sobs echoed by Lotor’s groan. Lance is full, way too full, and the knot isn’t going down. The spike of panic catches in his throat as more tears spill down his cheeks, startlingly cool.

The pulse inside him slows, Lotor comes back to himself, and he says, “Oh, how long will this last? Until you can no longer take any more.”

Lance shudders and keeps shuddering, feeling more come get pushed into him and knowing that has to be soon, it has to be. His belly feels stretched unnaturally. He’s too afraid to look down to see what it looks like but the come inside him isn’t just inhumanly hot, it’s heavy, too, shifting inside him as more is added in a way that makes Lance feel like he’s being turned inside out.

The word “release” takes him by surprise as Lotor removes the cuffs around his wrists, taking hold of them only to press them to Lance’s stomach and tell him, “touch; press gently. It will help you to take more.” Lance’s arms feel like noodles, so he supposes he couldn’t wrap his hands around Lotor’s neck and strangle him like he’d fantasized about doing earlier even if the soldier weren’t still stood right there at the wall behind the couch, waiting to tear them apart if needed.

A shot of shame floods through Lance as he remembers the soldier. Suddenly he feels his eyes on him as another shot of come fills him and he sobs, groans, through the stretch and the hurt. The soldier had watched all of it.

Lance doesn’t want to move his hands, doesn’t want to touch his own body more than he’s already been made to, but as his belly aches he closes his eyes so he can pretend it’s not happening and slowly starts to rub his hands in circles across his skin.

His belly is rounded, he can feel it, it’s rounded and it hurts and as he rubs, trying to stop crying, he can feel the come inside him move. It feels like he’s a bag filled with jello.

He opens his eyes and looks down at his stomach to find it’s flat pane pushed out, full, obscene. He can’t see clearly because he can’t stop fucking crying, especially not when there’s more come filling him and he’s hunching over around his belly as it shifts minutely under his hands, as he rubs it and hurts and wants to die so it all stops.

Lotor groans as he spilling inside Lance again, chest heaving when that pulse comes to a stop. He tells Lance, “you’re taking all of me, pretty. Such a good vessel for my come. Such a willing slut.”

It rolls off Lance now but he knows he’ll remember later. Before, he’d thought he’d be able to forget, put this behind him, and now it’s all he knows and part of him will be stuck on Lotor’s cock forever.

“Let me tell you a secret, my pretty pet,” Lotor murmurs, taking up the task of grinding his cock into Lance’s ass when Lance stops, unable to do more than shift in reaction now as he’s filled with more come, too full, heavy, fucked out to move otherwise. He catches Lance’s attention by taking hold of Lance’s chin, saying, “I offered the Champion, your Black Paladin, his freedom if he rode my cock like a slut until I was done with him, like you are. How different things would have been had he not refused me. I’m glad he did, now; I never would have watched you ruin yourself for me if he hadn’t.”

The words roll through Lance like anything inevitable. Of course Shiro refused, even when offered that. Shiro does not give in. Shiro would want Lance to never have given in too, he thinks with a sob he can’t stop, and then he’s not just crying but sobbing, great, messy sobs, uneven breaths, showing Lotor exactly how deep he’d got to him and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he hurts too much and he’s too ruined to care what the dick who did it to him thinks now he’s breaking.

Shiro is proud, and strong, and worth a thousand of Lance. And Lance let him down by giving in, and now Lance can never let Shiro know what happened to him here because if he does, Shiro will blame himself for something that was never his fault. Because Shiro doesn’t give in, and Lance did, and that’s no one’s fault but Lance’s, it’s all on him that he’s here.

 _Except Shiro was alone,_ a voice somewhere in the far back of his brain (it sounds like his older sister, and it’s as abrasive as it is welcome, always) insists on reminding Lance. _Shiro was alone and he didn’t have to protect anyone but himself._

He stops crying suddenly, as though he’s run out of air to do it with. He rubs at his stomach, wincing at the pain, and looks down at it. It feels like his body but it doesn’t look like it, and Lance finds himself looking critically at the way his belly bulges out and feeling dirty, filthy, disgusting, but not to blame. It being his choice doesn’t make it his fault.

He rubs his stomach, glaring down at it, blocking Lotor out as he calls him pretty and tells him all about how he took Lotor’s pleasure like a trained bitch. None of that matters. He’s never hated anyone the way he hates now. He feels caustic, feels broken. Feels angry like he’s never known before, and, at least for the moment, feels none of it at himself.

~~~

He keeps himself under control until Lotor’s last pulse of come stretches him to breaking point, his insides churning like they’ve been moved around and are trying to settle back where they belong, and until the knot starts to go down.

The pain sets in, shocking in its relentlessness and how it’s kind of fucking _everywhere_. The knot shrinking leaves everything in him trying to seep out around the cock, pushing still-hot come past stretched-too-tight insides and Lance’s rim is beginning to scream at him.

He ends up hunched over his stomach, pressing light as possible to it even though it’s doing nothing, brushing pained tears away every few seconds. The smell of sex, of Lotor, of the cum dripping out of him down Lotor’s cock and down Lance’s already wet thighs, all of it chokes him, until Lotor’s arms lift him off his knot, off his cock, his ass stretched too far and hurting one last time as it happens and he orders Lance: “do not spill a drop.”

Lance clenches down automatically, but can’t tighten enough. He can feel himself gaping, and what’s worse, he can feel the steady leak of come he can’t stop pouring out of him without the knot. He’s set down on his knees on the floor again, a hand to his head sending him face forward until his cheek touches the floor and his ass is in the air.

He hears Lotor say something but the rushing in his ears stops him from hearing it; instead he feels as something hard is pushed unto his ass again. The plug, or a bigger one magiced up from nowhere, it doesn’t matter. Lance’s ass is full again and he’s no longer leaking, but that just means the come is all still inside him and he’s still not done with this fucking nightmare.

He’s left alone for several minutes during which he stays very still, slows his crying, and thinks nothing at all.

He’s vaguely aware of someone pushing his ankles closer together, so either the cuffs are off or they’ve been reset, and then he’s being pulled to his feet by his favorite soldier and walked over to the bathroom. He’s pushed into a glass box before being sluiced over with hot water that comes at him from all four corners, angled down to miss the face of someone Galra height, so he has to shield his eyes. Then the water stops and hot air begins, drying him off. When the hot air shuts off, Lance stands there for several minutes with his eyes closed, unable to move, shaking badly, unable to understand how the thing he’d feared is over but is somehow still happening. It’s difficult to breathe normally. It’s getting more and more difficult to think.

He’s pulled out by surprisingly gentle hands that avoid touching Lance’s skin for any longer than necessary, but which take his hands and lock them back into cuffs before leading him back into the main room and lifting him onto the bed to lay, unmoving, feeling nothing. Feeling blankness.

Lotor is on the bed, still naked but obviously having washed, too. He has a drink in one hand and the portable screen from earlier in the other, reclining against the pillows exactly like he did when he watched Lance—

“How long are you making me keep it inside?” Lance asks. He needs to know because he needs to know exactly how long until he can stop half-hoping the others don’t find him if they come to try their chances at a rescue mission. He needs to know how long until he can start pretending everything’s okay and that nothing happened.

Lotor ignores him, though he does glance at the soldier and tell him he’s dismissed.

Lotor moves once the door closes behind the soldier again and they are alone. He moves towards Lance, languid and slow where he’d been lithe and too quick to watch, yesterday. _If I were Keith_ , Lance thinks, _I’d think this were as good a time as any to try and kill him._

Lotor lifts the glass to Lance’s lips, practiced now at knowing how to make Lance sip at it, while Lance knows not to do anything else. Lance turns his head after a few sips, though, flinching when the drink spills against his cheek instead of into his mouth. He just can’t drink any more, too full, too done.

Lotor pulls the glass away, drinking the rest himself before sitting next to Lance with the screen in front of him. It shows Pidge.

“My side of our agreement,” Lotor murmurs. Pidge on the screen looks up at something just out of shot, stares at it a moment, then moves towards it. They bend to the ground, favoring their right side visibly, but bringing a covered bowl up to their chest as they stand back up, a flask of something tucked into the crook of their arm. They walk back to their corner, sitting down with difficulty before opening the flask and sniffing at it. Lance can’t breathe; the bowl has _khobi_ fruit in it and this was all a fucking game, this was a trick, he knows it. He can’t breathe, he really can’t breathe.

Pidge takes a sip from the flask and seems to decide it’s okay, taking another, longer one before turning and uncovering the bowl.

And Lance’s heart starts again, he breathes again, his heart beating way too fast and he’s still tense – he will be until Pidge eats, until Lotor backs off – but it’s not fruit in that bowl, thank fuck.

Lotor lets him watch as Pidge eats and drinks a third of both the bowl and the flask, and Lance wonders what’s wrong when they stop until he realizes Pidge is just smart, that’s all, they’re rationing it in case it’s all they get.

Lance allows himself a moment to feel glad; glad he did it, glad he hurts, glad he’s never again going to be someone who didn’t whore himself out to save someone else’s life and to stop them from being touched.

 _I’m not proud or strong or worth much, I didn’t say no like Shiro,_ he thinks. _But I protected Pidge. I did good, I’m good. I am good. Even if I’m not okay._

~~~

Lance sleeps in snatched moments that night in between fighting through stomach cramps and moments where he shifts and hurts places that make him feel like it’s still happening ( _it is, though, it is, why hasn’t it stopped?_ ). He has to look over to Lotor’s sprawled out body to remind himself that he’s over there and Lance is here and that’s not Lotor’s knot in him, his belly isn’t still getting filled, that it’s over and he’s okay ( _it’s not and he isn’t_ ).

He’s numb, at least. Nearly.

He’s awake, on his side, pulling at the metal wiring of the walls around the bed with bleeding fingers when Lotor wakes up. He hovers over Lance, leaning in to his neck to breathe in deeply as Lance shivers, his heat invading Lance’s battered sense of personal space, before Lotor stands and picks Lance up, carrying him to the bathroom over-the-threshold style.

It’s so weird it breaks through Lance’s numbness; makes him want to laugh.

Lotor’s hair falls around him in a silver wave, long and beautiful and completely out of place on someone Lance hates so much, someone who makes Lance’s skin crawl and ache where he touches him.

He sets Lance down on his feet in the glass box of a shower, crowding in with him until Lance has his back against the opposite glass wall and Lotor is able to look at him. Lance’s eyes skitter over Lotor’s expression but don’t stay there, looking at his hair instead.

Lance imagines ripping each strand out one by one with his bare hands.

Lotor touches his shoulders, fingertip light, turning him around until his back is to Lotor and his pulse jumpstarts.

“Place your hands where I filled you,” he says, and Lance feels Lotor’s heat trace down his ass, between his cheeks, to where the plug still is. Lance’s hands shake, but he puts them on his belly and keeps them there even as Lotor rips the plug out (and it fucking _hurts_ , the hours since lube or stretching tightening him up around it) and leans in to whisper in Lance’s ear, “press down, pretty.”

Lance does, already feeling the come start to leave him, biting back a wail as he puts pressure on his belly and feels the trickle from his gaping hole turn into a slow ooze.

Lotor steps back, presumably to watch, tapping the glass in front of Lance as he moves and watching Lance’s reaction as the glass turns opaque, becoming a mirror. He flushes, hands trembling; turns his eyes away from himself but can’t burn the image totally out of his brain. He looks wrecked. 

He watches his belly instead as he presses on it to push the come out of him, feeling it drip down his legs and pool around him in the bed of the shower so he and Lotor both stand in a layer of Lotor’s come.

It’s over quicker than he’d expected. That, or he’s losing time again, this time without the concussion. Lance is looking down at his flat belly, his soft cock, white come painting the floor beneath him, and suddenly he thinks, _did I come last night?_ and recoils.

Because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember. He can’t have done. He’d remember that. It’s fine, he’s fine, he _didn’t come_.

He jerks his head up to stare at Lotor in the mirror when Lotor puts his hands in Lance’s hair, suddenly, and starts working something dark and foamy through it.

“What are you doing?”

Lance hears his voice but doesn’t remember deciding to ask that. He sees the hands in his hair, feels the way they’re moving and the prickling up the neck of discomfort, but it’s like they’re happening to a body he’s only in accidentally, that isn’t his own.

“Washing you,” Lotor says.

“Why?”

Lotor flashes an amused smirk to Lance’s reflection in the mirror. He moves away for a moment, coming back with more of the foam in his hands. He touches Lance’s neck, feather light but that doesn’t matter, he jumps anyway, and runs his hands over Lance’s shoulders, down his arms. He takes each of Lance’s hands, rubbing the foam into his skin gently, pushing his fingers between Lance’s own to get between them, even. The foam stings where Lance has torn his fingernails apart. Lotor comes back with more foam, standing with his chest to Lance’s back to rub the foam all over Lance’s chest, and Lance distantly thinks, _you’re getting your own come all over you_ , and shakes.

Lotor rubs the foam over Lance’s soft cock, between his legs, over his ass and inside his ruined hole. He crouches, rubbing the foam into his legs, picking up each of his feet and treating them as gently, being as thorough, as he was with Lance’s hands.

Lotor turns the water on. It’s much gentler this time than it was the night before, but this time Lance has Lotor’s hands on him to keep him unsteady, unable to breathe except desperately, around hiccups. When Lotor pushes his fingers inside Lance, he’s gentle, careful; he coos in Lance’s ear when he gasps at the hurt and keeps his other hand on Lance’s stomach so he can’t get away. 

When Lotor’s done cleaning him, he lets him go and Lance backs into the mirror, watching Lotor warily as Lotor goes about cleaning himself, keeping a running commentary on where Lotor’s hands are in his head because right now that’s what he needs to not go mad trapped here in a box with him.

“Why?” Lance asks again. “You don’t do anything for nothing.”

Lotor shuts off the water before he answers, leaving Lance shivering in the cold as he does.

“You held my come inside yourself all night without complaint,” Lotor tells him, his reasonable tone not matching his smirk. “I wished to give you something in return.”

Hollow, Lance says, “I didn’t want either. I didn’t agree to either.”

Lotor insinuates himself into Lance’s space. He’s even hotter without clothes between his body and Lance’s. Even if Lance closed his eyes, though Lotor’s not touching him at all, he wouldn’t be able to pretend he wasn’t there.

“You could have asked me to stop,” Lotor tells him. 

He turns on the hot air and stays in Lance’s space, watching, Lance assumes, him tremble and fight not to break in front of him as they dry.

He isn’t carried back to the bed, and though he still hurts, though he limps and has to pretend it isn’t happening, he’s glad. Lotor lifts him back onto the bed and leaves him there alone, ignoring him as he goes through his morning routine while Lance lies still, waiting for him to leave so he can either go back to working on his terrible plan, ripping his fingers up in the process, or start having a breakdown.

He still hasn’t settled on one or the other by the time Lotor leaves, so he turns on his side (it hurts both less and more than it did last night) and starts tearing at the wires as he breaks down, goes numb, stops feeling anything.

~~~

His plan still isn’t working. His fingers are ripped up and there’s anxiety bubbling in his throat forcing him to keep swallowing or cry again, uselessly. When the soldier picks him up from the bed for his daily walk and piss, it’s a relief and it’s terrible, both, equally. His legs ache today. It’s hard not to remember why with each step, but he grits his teeth and gets on with it because in a minute he’ll be left alone again and he’s finding it easier and easier to drift into not thinking at all each time that happens.

On the last walk around the room, though, he just barely hears the soldier speak from behind him.

“Lunge at me when I put you back on the bed like you’re attacking me.”

Lance nearly stops walking. He picks his foot up a half-step out of time with the soldier and has to speed up to avoid getting walked into. His head is spinning, his hands are suddenly shaking.

 _Is this a trap? A mind game?_ Lance wonders, not calm, but weirdly not as freaked out as he should be, either. He keeps his head down and keeps walking but inside he’s flicking through all the things he can stand to remember from the last four days, trying to think it out. But he’s coming to the end of the last lap and he has to decide what to do. Whether to trust.

As Lance is lifted up he realizes he’d forgotten to, you know, actually figure out what he’s going to do to attack the soldier, and with that thought he guesses he’s decided.

So as he hits the bed, he flails his arms up, fists balled up together, and aims for the Galra’s throat.

He doesn’t even connect. He’s on his back, a hand at his throat and a Galra straddling his waist before he knows it and only how quick it all was is putting off a full-blown freak out.

The soldier’s other hand is holding a knife and really Lance needs to be thinking about that, not about how this is the second time he didn’t move fast enough and ended up getting touched by a Galra when he didn’t want to be, not about how his heart is going to beat out of his chest, not about how he can’t move he can’t move and he needs to he needs to get away—

The soldier leans towards him, threatening him with the knife, but then he leans further forward and slips the knife underneath Lance’s back, flat between him and the bed so the pommel digs into his shoulder blade.

“Hide it,” the soldier says, before shoving Lance down into the bed he’s already flat against and is gone, marching out of the room. As if that were just business as usual.

Lance can’t move for a long time until finally the words _hide it_ hit him and he realizes what’ll happen if Lotor comes back and moves him just to find a knife under his shoulder. He rolls over onto his front, careful to keep the knife underneath him – _there must be cameras?_ he realizes, thinking he’d been dumb to not assume so this whole time, especially when he’d seen they had cameras on Pidge – and makes a show of putting his head in his hands and gasping so his shoulders heave, so he can look.

Fuck.

He knows that knife; he knows the symbol on its pommel. He used to see it every day. Keith used to keep it strapped to his back, and Lance knows it has to be Keith’s because of how butt-hurt all the other Marmorans are at the idea of an outsider so much as touching the non-pointy end. He just doesn’t know if it’s meant to mean it’s up to him to fight his way out or if it means he’s nearly done waiting to be rescued.

There’s a gap between the wall of the bed and the mattress that the knife’s just about small enough to get shoved into, not noticeable once Lance puts a cushion over it in the guise of getting something to rest his head on as he keeps up his useless work with the wires of the wall.

Thing is, he’s not sure it’ll matter whether the message was _sit tight_ or _dude, your ride’s here_ or even _you’re on your own_. Because that last one feels true in a way he hates and knows isn’t fair on anyone.

Now he’s got a weapon, all those fantasies he’s had about killing Lotor, all the infinite ways he’s imagined doing it, they’re all coming back full force. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop himself if Lotor makes him— if he touches Lance again. 

His utter lack of a plan of what to do after, succeed or fail, isn’t feeling much like a reason not to do it, either.

~~~

Lance’s pavlovian response to the sound of Galran alarms going off is to grab his bayard, check in with Shiro and Allura, and to try not to panic because the alarm means the Galra know they’re here. When they start blaring, the only one of his instincts Lance can go with is the least useful one, so, while his heart beats too quickly in his chest, he pushes himself up to sit where he can see the door to wait for whatever’s coming. And the panic doesn’t go away, but it’s shot through with hope, too. Because they’re here, aren’t they? They have to be. They’ve come to get him and Pidge.

Nothing at all happens for a long time, so long that Lance has managed to calm himself down and is trying to hear anything over the sound of the alarm when he finally does hear something: shouting coming from beyond the door. Someone ordering someone else to do something, Lance thinks, and as soon as he comes to that conclusion he braces himself for Lotor, his hand creeping towards the knife to his left.

The door opens and Lotor proves him right as he strides inside, not even glancing at Lance as he goes to his desk, rifling through it. Tension vibrates through Lance until he knows he can’t keep quiet, can’t keep waiting, so he opens his mouth and says, “it’s them, isn’t it?”

Lotor continues going through his desk, ignoring Lance, stripping his gauntlets off with a frustrated noise when he fumbles with something because of them. He finds what he was looking for, finally – a small black sphere, like something the Olkari might make – and holds onto it as he unclasps his cloak with angry movements.

“They’ve come to rescue us,” Lance says, watching Lotor carefully, watching the anger roll off him. The room around them suddenly lurches, Lance getting shoved into the wall beside him while Lotor has to grab onto it to keep his balance. Lance doesn’t bother suppressing his smile as he adds, “and it’s not going well for you.”

Lance’s smile can’t last through the look Lotor levels at him, no matter how hard he tries. Lotor leans over the wall, taller than Lance by a distance anyway and using every inch of it to remind Lance who has all the power here.

“Have no doubt, pretty,” Lotor says, still holding onto the sphere in one hand and caressing Lance’s hair with the other. “I will destroy each and every one of them, as I have already destroyed you.”

Lance flinches; can’t stop himself. Only the hilt of the knife under Lance’s fingers stops him from reacting any worse.

“I find myself torn,” Lotor says. He’s still stroking Lance’s hair and every time he does Lance loses his breath. He’s trying to figure out where Lotor’s armor has weak points but it’s too hard to concentrate when he’d rather be swallowed by the bed beneath him and never come out again. “It would be amusing to leave you here for them to find, but you were a good whore for me, and I find myself wanting to take you with me. What do you think, pretty?”

Lance thinks—

Lance is finding thinking difficult. And Lotor knows it, from the way he’s smirking down at him. Lance is shaking and he doesn’t know if it’s from Lotor’s hand in his hair or anger at him, and it doesn’t really matter, anyway, because he doesn’t know what to do.

They’re coming for him, but they might not get here in time. And if they do, they’ll know. And he knows that’s better than getting stuck with Lotor, he knows that, it’s just difficult to think past the hands on him to get to doing anything about it.

The ship rocks violently again, the sound of something exploding breaking through the alarms that are still going off. Lance thinks, _they better not accidentally explode me_.

And then he thinks, _he thinks he broke me_ , and he lets his breath quicken. He draws his shoulders and knees up, curling into himself, keeping his eyes on Lotor but widening them, and watches as Lotor’s smirk grows.

Feels it as Lotor strokes through his hair one last time before gliding fingers down the side of Lance’s face, pausing at his lips. Coming to rest at Lance’s throat.

“You desperately want me to give you up to them, don’t you, pretty?” Lotor says, fingers at Lance’s frantic pulse. “But you are mine, whatever I do with you now. Aren’t you? My pet. My pretty boy.”

Lance shudders. That part’s involuntary, but when he opens his mouth and pants in fear, that’s not.

“Don’t, please,” he makes himself say, the words wrong in his mouth. Too late, and never going to work anyway. Except that this time they do.

Lotor grins, leaping over to join Lance on the bed so he’s leaning over him and can press his hand down against Lance’s throat, pinning him down on the bed. As if he thinks just the memory of his hand there will be enough to keep Lance still, he trails that hand down Lance’s chest, over his belly, over his thighs. Lance shakes, gasping, twisting his hands in their restraints, and he doesn’t have to be feigning fear to use it against Lotor.

“If only I had the time to fuck you again right now,” Lotor says, his hand trailing down over Lance’s cock, his balls, behind. “Leave you lying here covered in the evidence for them to find. Would you cry again?”

Lance is one touch away from crying now, but he’s found it, he can feel it now. He’d just needed to get close up enough to see the place where Lotor’s breastplate overlaps with his arm guards – a slice of vulnerability that’s totally useless to Lance normally with his gun, but that he’s seen Shiro go for in Galran armor a few different times. But he’s also on his back, unable to reach his knife unless he moves, and has a half-assed, half-thought, half-baked plan to make happen, so he twists himself over and out of Lotor’s grip in the guise of being petrified. It’s not hard to act, and Lotor’s mocking laugh tells him he falls for it, so once Lance is on his front he grabs hold of the edge of the mattress, pulls himself to it, and grabs the hilt of the knife from where it’s hidden.

Lotor, still laughing at him, grabs the hair at the back of his neck and uses it to flip him back over, and is still laughing when he realizes what Lance has done. Lance watches as Lotor takes in the fury in Lance’s eyes, his set mouth, as he recognizes the blade that’s been insinuated between his plates of armor, that has cut through material underneath with ease to press against his skin, between two of his ribs.

For a moment, they stare at each other. Lance tries to calm his breathing and his pulse. Then Lance says, “get them off me or I kill you,” indicating his cuffs. Shifting to do it, he’s less careful than he maybe should me. He feels Lotor’s skin give under the fur, sees Lotor’s eyes flicker for a moment.

“If you kill me,” Lotor says, “you won’t get them off. You won’t get back to your friends.”

Lance laughs, once, brutal like he feels, like the feel of a knife resting on your skin. “You think that outweighs getting to watch you die?” he asks. “If my other choices are them seeing me like this or you taking me with you, I’ll take killing you.”

Lotor considers him, furious but contained. Probably trying to figure out if he could kill Lance first, which he probably could. Lance doesn’t really care, though, which of them comes out of this as long as it’s over, and some of that must show.

Lance says, “put one hand on my handcuffs and the other on the ones round my ankles,” and feels heady when Lotor does, ignoring that his mouth is stretching out into that smirk Lance hates. “Say it. Get them off me.”

Lotor raises an eyebrow, and for a second Lance thinks, _there’s going to be a shot of pain now. I’m going to keel over and wake up later and nothing will have changed._

But Lotor says, “release,” and Lance’s cuffs click open all at once. Lotor even pulls them off for him.

“Does that feel better, my pretty boy?” Lotor asks. He touches Lance’s wrist, rubbing where he’s sore, and Lance’s skin crawls, he shivers, it’s terrible and wonderful. “You fight so hard, don’t you? What shall I do with you?”

And suddenly Lotor’s hands are round his wrists and he feels trapped, he can’t move. He’s still pinned there to the bed underneath him. Lotor’s heat is pressed against his front and Lance’s head feels dizzy, his tongue is heavy with the smell of cloves; he’s choking. He’s trembling and weak and the knife in his hands is nothing.

Lance blinks at it. He can’t feel it, but his eyes tell him he’s still holding it and it’s still pressed to Lotor’s ribs, and Lotor’s hands on his wrists shift, rubbing, making him feel like jello, but the knife is still in his hands like Lotor doesn’t think it could sink into his body right now.

“My pretty pet,” Lotor murmurs. “My poor thing.”

Lance looks into Lotor’s face and watches the moment Lotor realizes he’s got him, realizes he’s won, and opens his mouth to say, “pretty boy.”

Lance pushes himself up, and Lotor chokes around the words. His face transforms the way Lance had seen it happen once before, but he doesn’t seem able to breathe, isn’t going to be spitting in Lance’s mouth, isn’t going to call him pretty.

Lance’s fingers are wet. He looks down, noting the knife sunk to the hilt in Lotor’s chest, the blue-black blood seeping out, slicking Lance’s fingers. Lotor’s hands have slackened against Lance’s wrists but Lance’s grip around the knife is so tight his knuckles have gone pale.

Lotor makes a terrible thundering noise in the back of his throat that brings Lance’s eyes back up to his face, and he watches as Lotor’s mouth splits open, as he grins; it’s a violent, bloody grin. He grabs again at Lance’s wrist with one hand, the other desperately pressing at the wound in his side, (Lance’s hands are starting to drip with blood) and Lotor uses his grip to pull Lance in closer to him until his breath is in Lance’s face. 

“I’ll kill you for that,” Lotor promises. 

Lance wrenches his hand out of his grip and the knife out of Lotor’s body at the same time. He cracks the pommel to Lotor’s temple, hard, like he’s seen Keith and Allura do, using strength he didn’t know he had, and watches as Lotor sags, his smile fading. 

“No, you won’t,” Lance tells Lotor’s unconscious body as it starts bleeding out. “I got you first.”

He stands, watching the blood pool. The blood keeps dripping from his fingers, landing on Lotor, on the bed, on Lance’s feet.

The ship lurches again, throwing Lance off his feet and out of his head as he catches himself against the mattress and remembers how quickly he needs to move. He gets to his feet, tripping over the sphere Lotor had retrieved from his desk as he does so and grabbing it absently. He vaults out of the bed, ignoring how much of his body hurts, and goes to Lotor’s wardrobe to find something, anything, to at least cover up with even if armor is a pipe dream.

He finds a body suit like the one Lotor wears – wore – under his armor that’ll have to do, even if Lance ends up turning up the cuffs at the feet and wrists. Feeling a little more steady, Lance wipes the knife off with some silken material in the wardrobe before going to the door and pressing his hand to the access panel. When it doesn’t open, he takes a page out of Keith’s book; he slams into the panel with the knife before prying the door open with it, coming out into a long corridor and face-to-face with two Galra soldiers.

They look identical, and Lance has no idea if either of them are the one who helped him.

Also, he realizes, he still has very clearly Galran blood on his hands.

He lifts the knife in front of him automatically, but as he’s gearing up to do something with it one of the soldiers shoves the other one back and draws his weapon, turning on them, telling Lance, “run,” and Lance doesn’t need to be told twice.

He runs in the direction the soldier had indicated, heading in the direction, he thinks, of the explosions. Which is just great. So he’s running, limping, hands bloody – and why does he keep thinking about that? – and where he’s running to is maybe where the other paladins are but is definitely where they’re blowing things up. And he knows how good they are at doing that. _This is a terrible idea,_ he thinks, but doesn’t slow down.

And he’s thinking, _help, please, let me get out of this_ at the part of his mind that’s Blue as he runs. He needs his gun, his hand not holding the knife feeling empty even with the sphere in it. He needs his team in his ear. He needs Blue, comforting and strong around him.

The next explosion hits right ahead of him, and as it hits it sends him flying back to hit the floor. Stunned, breathless, he stares up at the ceiling and thinks, _really, guys?_ in the direction of Blue again like the others will be able to hear him and laugh or scold him for being in the wrong place like they normally would.

This time, though, his answer isn’t silence. Blue roars, and it echoes through his whole head, through his body. She’s close. She’s close and she’s furious and she’s ready to rip this ship apart piece by piece to get to him, and her strength fills him as he pushes himself up and sees her.

She’s just right there, right up ahead. She was the explosion. She’d come to him and slammed through a whole chunk of the ship, blowing it out so her head fills the corridor. He sees her force field go up, sees it arcing above his head and coming down just past where he landed, so he’s encased in it. And suddenly he can breathe again.

He gets up, stumbling, running to her.

The feeling of her embraces him like the feeling of coming home, and nothing, not the blood on his hands or the hurt he feels as he sits at her control chair, nothing else matters in that moment.

Images of the others flicker onto the screen in front of him as he touches the controls. Shiro, looking like he’s strung together by determination, guilt, and the caffeine-replacement Pidge had cooked up their second week in the Castle; Keith, fierce and angry, currently contorted in his seat in a way that means he’s pulling off a completely impossible maneuver with Red; Hunk, biting his lip, eyes darting around as he tries to keep up with everything, tries to protect everyone; Allura, standing tall in the control room as she gestures and makes more things explode. And best of all: Pidge is with Hunk, leaning on the back of his seat like that’s the only thing keeping them upright, but they’re okay. They’re alive and they’re free.

They all spot Lance at the same time, and he watches them react, the way Hunk and Keith both shout his name, though he can’t hear it without his comm unit. He smiles instead, gives them a wave, then pulls Blue out of her face-first parking spot and heads in the direction her sensors tell him the others are.

Allura is talking, Lance can see, so he gestures to his ear and shrugs and hopes she gets the message. She frowns, hits some buttons with a frustration that makes Lance feel giddy, for some reason, maybe because it’s so familiar, and then her voice is filling the whole space around him.

“Lance?” she says.

“Hey, guys,” he replies. He clears his throat and tries to make himself sound more normal, more… steady, and he asks, “miss me?”

Pidge laughs as Hunk says, “dude, _so_ much,” and Shiro adds, sincerely, “it’s good to have you back.” Keith tells him, “we were coming for you,” and Lance can’t decide if Keith’s annoyed or if he’s maybe a little impressed.

“Yeah, well,” Lance says, bringing Blue up in an arc over a stream of fighters so he can blast them all with one shot. “You guys were exploding things and I figured I’d better get out of there before I was one of the things. Y’know?” He grins, and if it feels fixed and wrong on his face the others don’t seem to notice.

“Allura,” he adds, letting the grin drop. “Lotor’s dead.”

It’s only because he’s watching her face that he sees the conflict there, and, yeah, there was definitely something more complicated there than Lance had any kind of context for. He’d never feel bad for doing it, but what he sees in her face does put a bloom of anxiety in his chest for a moment, until she squares her shoulders and says, “good.”

She doesn’t hesitate, then, just says, “get back to the Castle, Paladins. I am worm-holing us away from here.”

The resistance to them leaving is pitiful, a couple fighters here and there making a go at slowing them down that Lance and Keith pick off with ease, and then the wormhole is open and Lance takes Blue into her Castle bay moments before Allura takes them through it.

The exhilaration of the fight and flight of it all drains out of Lance as Blue settles down in her spot. He sighs, shuddering through it.

The screen empties out, Blue giving him privacy as he stares at his hands on her controls. He lifts them, feeling sick when he sees he’s left blood on the grips and wishing he’d washed them before he left Lotor’s room even though he knows things might’ve gone wrong if he’d been even a little bit slower getting away. He wipes his hands on the dark material of the body suit he’s wearing, knowing he’s going to be throwing it out anyway, and some of the blood does wipe off. It’s under his fingernails, though. It’s in the groves of his hands. The more it’s dried, the more it looks like human blood, too, so even the disconnect of it being the wrong color disappears. And it smells like blood. It is blood, and now Lance has to get up and walk out there with blood on his hands, face his friends with what he’s done written all over his body if they know how to look.

Blue steadies him. She’s warm. She’s calm. She tells him without words that he’ll be okay.

Lance lets his hands shake as he takes them off the controls to pick up Lotor’s black sphere and Keith’s blade, gripping both tightly to hide the tremors as he stands and leaves the comfort of Blue behind.

They’re all waiting for him – he must have taken longer to get himself together than he realized, unless they ran down to meet him. Hunk runs forward and pulls him into a full-body hug, one Lance can’t help but flinch away from, gasping as it happens anyway.

Hunk pushes him away, holding onto Lance’s shoulders to frown at him and ask, “hey, you okay?” Lance makes himself go in for a better hug, holding onto Hunk tightly to make up for before. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible, either.

“I’m fine,” he tells Hunk’s shoulder. “Just need a half hour in a healing pod, that’s all.”

Hunk nods, and Lance can feel him crying in relief, so when Lance can’t stand to hold onto the hug anymore he gives Hunk a grin and says, “I knew you’d come get us,” absorbing the warmth of Hunk’s teary smile before turning to Pidge.

They look exhausted, mostly, and a little rough around the edges, but they take in the blood on Lance’s hands and the blade he’s holding without comment. They hold out Lance’s bayard, saying, “we found this with mine,” with a smile, and as Lance takes it he smiles completely genuinely for the first time.

“Thanks,” he says. And adds, “I’m glad you’re okay. And I brought you something, too.” He holds the sphere out to them, avoiding meeting their gaze, but finds his smile widening as Pidge exclaims in excitement and takes the sphere from him.

Lance takes a breath. Two down, four to go before he can sink into the darkness of the healing pod and then immediately to bed. He braces himself.

Coran just grips his shoulder and says something in Altean that doesn’t seem to translate, but Shiro and Keith stand either side of Allura and the three of them watch Lance. Allura seems hesitant. Keith looks as though he’s trying to do his Shiro-like _be calm_ thing, while Shiro himself is looking at Lance’s hands and looks wrecked. He seems to catch himself doing it as Lance steps forward, and he raises his eyes to Lance’s face, unable to hide the guilt he’s feeling quick enough, though he tries.

In the face of that, Lance feels something crack in his brain and he hears himself say, “hey, uh, sorry for getting us captured,” gesturing at Pidge. They say his name, outraged, but he talks over them: “I need to get quicker so it doesn’t happen again.”

He sees the façade Shiro was putting in place shatter and feels guilty for it, but it’s Allura who takes a step towards him, putting a hand on his arm, and says, “no, Lance, we were unprepared. It wasn’t your fault.” 

“None of us were ready for Lotor,” Keith adds, an undertone to his voice that tells Lance all he needs to know about Keith’s reaction to Allura’s revelations while he and Pidge were gone.

“Come on, let’s get you both down to the pods,” Shiro says, stepping in, sounding steady as ever when he speaks. Lance glances at him out of the corner of his eye and sees he looks that steady, too, so when Shiro offers him a smile Lance doesn’t feel bad about leaning on that comfort for a moment.

After, when he gets out of the pods, Lance is looking forward to a shower, a long one, one’s he’s going to take alone, facing the door and not thinking about the last one. He’s looking forward to getting into bed, too, and sleeping alone in a locked room.

When he steps out of the pod, Coran is waiting for him. He says, “you were in there a little longer than expected, but that’s okay. Everyone’s having dinner, if you want to join us,” and doesn’t push when Lance shakes his head and tells him he just wants a shower and sleep.

He doesn’t say anything, either, when Lance picks up both his bayard and Keith’s blade from where he’d left them outside the pod.

And Lance doesn’t think about it when he holds onto the knife as he sleeps.

~~~

He wakes up in the middle of the night surprised to find himself wearing pajamas and able to move his arms and legs. Remembering he’s not there anymore is equally elating and terrifying, and as Lance lies in bed holding Keith’s knife he feels like the walls are closing in on him with every breath he quakes his way through.

He gets up, leaving the knife on the bed because he is not going to take it with him wherever he goes (not forever), and in sleep is going to be when he’s most in need of it, anyway. He grabs the comfort of his robe and slippers before stepping out into the silent ship, making his way to the observation deck off from the kitchen where he stops for a bowl full of goo when his stomach grumbles in protest at being ignored too long.

The observation deck’s outside wall and roof are clear glass, so perfect Lance feels like he could touch the stars as he sits, looking out at them as he eats.

He watches the stars and tries to get himself together, telling himself he’s going to have to be better at this if he’s going to avoid letting the others see how destroyed Lotor might have left him.

He puts his empty bowl down beside him; pulls his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them, telling himself, _you’ve just got to decide to be okay_.

A noise behind him startles him, but when he turns he sees it’s Shiro, hesitating in the doorway. He’s sleep-rumpled but awake, so Lance offers him a tight smile and turns back to the stars. At least if he’s off and weird he can just blame it on it being the middle of the night, and it’s just Shiro who’ll see it.

Lance tries not to tense up as Shiro settles down next to him, though he’s at least a foot away. Shiro’s looking at the stars, too, and that’s all they do for several long, quiet minutes. Lance isn’t comfortable in the silence, exactly, but he’s not willing to break it, either.

Eventually Shiro asks, “you couldn’t sleep either, huh?” and smiles kindly when Lance shrugs.

He’s so patient, Lance thinks. As his arm catches the light, Lance decides he owes it to Shiro to try to put it in words. Because Shiro is trying to help, and because he might actually get it.

So he says, “I woke up thinking I was still there.” He hugs his knees tighter, watching as Shiro nods without comment or pity, just understanding. “I really need to sleep, but I don’t want to wake up like that again.”

Silence stretches between them like the dark spaces between the stars they’re both watching, threatening to swallow up what’s left of Lance’s ability to keep himself together.

Lance tells himself to stop being so goddamned dramatic; he’s going to turn into Keith, otherwise.

“Yeah, that fucking sucks,” Shiro tells him, his mouth twisting down in a sympathetic, wry turn. “Some of my worst ones are where I don’t have this yet,” he admits, with a forced casual tone as he waves the fingers of his metal arm. “They’re not even really nightmares, but the disconnect throws me off all day.”

Lance nods into his knees, looking at Shiro and finding out as he watches him that he’s fiercely glad they’d got Shiro out of Galra hands a second time, even with everything that happened after. It shocks him, how glad he is, and he finds himself asking, “have you been okay since we got you out?”

Shiro’s eyebrows go up and his eyes fill with something dark and uncomfortably private for a moment, but he smiles dryly and says, “well, I haven’t slept much, if that’s what you mean. Except the first night, if that counts, but I was in a pod. So it probably shouldn’t.”

Lance huffs a laugh, shakes his head, and says, “no, it doesn’t,” and they lapse back into silence. It’s more comfortable this time, at first, but after a few moments Lance starts feeling like he ought to be spilling his heart out on the floor, and he doesn’t want that. Doesn’t actually see how he could possibly survive the fall out of that right now.

So he says, “I really don’t want to talk about it tonight,” and means _I don’t want to talk about it until I’ve figured out how I’m going to lie._

“I know,” Shiro tells him. “That’s okay.” He hesitates, watching Lance carefully, and then he lifts a hand in Lance’s direction and asks, “Lance, can I hug you?”

Lance tenses all over, pulling his knees closer to his chest, and Shiro pulls his hand back straight away and says, “so… that’s a no.” His tone turns softer, soothing, as he adds, “Okay, that’s okay.”

Lance shudders, closing his eyes, thinking, _this is it_ and feels like it must be so obvious, all of it, every touch, everything he did must be so clear.

But Shiro doesn’t say anything, doesn’t accuse him of anything, just stays sitting next to him, quiet and calm. He waits Lance out, until Lance shudders out a breath and says, “sorry,” flashing him a probably totally unconvincing smile that Lance still pours all of his energy into.

Shiro just shakes his head, smiling kindly still, and says, “no, it’s okay, I get it. You don’t have to push yourself.”

Lance does, though, is the thing. Shiro smiling at him just reminds him of the way he’d looked at him when Lance had first stepped out of Blue, reminds him that Shiro’s probably feeling guilty for how Lance and Pidge got captured. Reminds him that he doesn’t want to make that guilt worse.

Also, Lance really does want the comfort Shiro’s offering. Part of him deep in his chest aches for it so much he thinks he’d cry if he got it, which might defeat the point of reassuring Shiro he’s okay, but then again, maybe it wouldn’t. Shiro gets it. Like maybe no one else in the whole universe does.

So Lance looks at Shiro, pushing away all the emotions battling it out for his attention, taking in Shiro’s understanding, and makes himself reach out and take Shiro’s hand in his. He holds onto it.

Shiro, very gently, squeezes Lance’s hand, and Lance hears himself give this great trembling exhale, and then he lays his head on his knees, turned towards Shiro so he can remind himself who it is he’s touching when he needs that, and he covers his eyes and cries.

Shiro stays with him, holding his hand, until Lance is all cried out and his butt’s numb from sitting in the same place so long, his legs and back aching from the same.

“Just take it one day at a time,” Shiro suggests, rubbing his thumb soothingly across Lance’s knuckles to the time of Lance’s uneven breaths. “That’s all I do.”

Shiro stays until Lance is ready to piece himself back together again, if not for forever, then at least for the night.

**Author's Note:**

> the tag for 'food issues' is because lance and pidge are captured and food is withheld from them; lance thinks about food a lot, because of that, throughout the fic. 
> 
> i tagged for 'character death', but not 'major character death', because none of the characters from the current show die, and technically any death is off-screen, though stabbing and severe blood-loss does happen on-screen. okay, look (spoiler warning!!): it's lotor. lotor gets shanked. sorry, lotor fans, but the dude's a rapist in this fic, so???? hopefully no one's too sad or surprised?
> 
> please let me know if you think anything else should be tagged, and if you've got to this point needing more info before you read the fic, please feel free to send me a message at [my tumblr](https://nopears.tumblr.com/). also, come talk to be about voltron there, or shout at me for hurting lance, whatever does it for you :)
> 
> cheers, guys!


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